Murdock1979

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Hello Everybody,

As a long time KDE user, I am calling on other fellow happy KDE users to show their desire to have implementd a small yet useful feature in the KDE environment. Not only actual programming, but the feedback, as well, is a major part of development. So please take out just a moment to show your opinion about this issue.

I have been trying to track down any information about having a feature that can let Openoffice use KDE's file dialog and its other goodies, including kioslaves.

This means you can:

• Use KDE Bookmarks
• Directly access data locations not on your computer, such as ftp and ssh storage spaces
• Have a common standard interface throughout your desktop manager

Apparently, there has been some talk about it in the past, as is described here:

http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=18573
and here:

http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Ideas/11.1

However, it is almost unfortunate that there is no clear way to integrate such a popular office suite and widely used desktop environment together. Having a global file picker is standard for desktop managers and KDE should be no different.

Of course, Openoffice can still its default file picker, as well as Windows, Gnome's, etc. when those desktop environments are being used.

I understand that the appropriate place to let this issue be known is at the OpenOffice forums, but since this is such a basic desktop feature and I did not see much development on it yet, I figured, it would best to help gather more information about this feature from a more general forum.

(Naturally, I will gladly abide to any LQ moderators deeming this topic inappropriate.)

jailbait

I think that koffice already does what you are proposing. koffice has not been developed as far as Open Office but what koffice has completed is integrated with KDE. You could accomplice your integration goal by putting effort into completing koffice instead of putting effort into changing Open Office.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/koffice/

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Steve Stites

Murdock1979

Hello,

You are correct, but KDE is a desktop manager, not a self running system. It should only be intuitive that such a feature should be part of OpenOffice.

Murdock

johnson_steve

NO!!!

I think that would be a terrible idea! what about those of us who don't want to run KDE? Open office may not be fast or intergrated into anything, but it's written in java and runs on everything! think of all the platforms that couldn't use openoffice anymore if this happened. in a world where openoffice is the most viable and portable office suite available regaurdless of your OS or DE the last thing that needs to happen is to make it less functional so that it can look pretty for you. as has already been mentioned if intergration is your thing then there is already an office suite for you: koffice.

Murdock1979

Hello,

Of course, OpenOffice's standard dialogs will be available. I am referring to a feature that KDE users can implement. And not only KDE dialogs, but any dialog that the user's OS is currently using, for that matter.

KDE and OpenOffice run on two distinct layers of an operating system and they should work together; one is the desktop manager and the other the application. Having a standard file dialog is a fundamental feature of any desktop manager, regardless of the applications it is running.

Murdock

johnson_steve

Well I think a great deal of what makes oppenoffice great is it's crossplatformness. (hey look I invented a new word.) it doesn't need to be intergrated into anything any you can run it on everything. why should kde be shown preference over all the other options that are available. it's bad enough that I had to install the kde libs just so I can run k3b. considering that as far as I can tell there are only 2 office suites available for linux and one is allready made explicitly for kde why would you need this? are the standard OO dialogs that bad? Don't get me wrong kde is great (especialy for newbs), but it's just way to heavy for many applications and linux is all about choice. not to mention that of the 3 DEs available for linux 2 of them use gtk making kde the odd man out.

Murdock1979

Hello,

You are correct that this feature should not be limited to KDE per se. I chose that since its file dialogs really provide major features (all the kioslaves, for example). With KDE, I have ftp, ssh, and other remote drives all in one file dialog without any need to mount any network or other drives. But that is besides the point.

From a design standpoint, I think it is only natural for any desktop manager to be able to integrate its file dialogs into the applications it is running.

And with regards to crossplatformness, I use OpenOffice on Windows systems, and it seamlessly uses Window's dialogs. If so, why shouldn't such a basic idea be available for other desktop managers as well?

Murdock