Re: SEUL: Mail got bounced: Here are a few msgs that didn't get through...

[Micah Yoder <yoderm@geocities.com>]

jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:

> I sent a mail with title "Dispelling fallacies about Qt" with a
> demonstration of why the Qt license would allow the use of KDE even if
> Troll changes the license.  But also about the real dangers of Qt and
> why having the dominant Linux desktop based on it would be a bad idea.
> So better avoid helping KDE by including it in distributions.

Yes, I read that E-mail and pretty much agree.

> Qt software in small apps like Ezppp is one thing, a desktop like KDE
> with its potential to become the federator of Linux GUI is another.

I'm not suggesting we develop ANYTHING - even small applets with Qt. 
All I'm saying is, if we find an app that someone else wrote, that would
make a good addition to SEUL, we'd be nuts not to include it, even if it
used Qt.

> There is Andrew but is not really a WP its main use was for composing
> multimedia documents.  The one real sized free WP I know is Thot
> (http://www.inrialpes.fr).

I guess I should check that one out....

> For designing a good Office suit it is more important to have good
> ergonomists and good font designers than good programmers.  For that

It's easy to come by fonts.  You can get CDs with thousands of them. 
There are *probably* a lot of free ones we can include with SEUL.

For ergonomics, we could pretty much copy M$Office, maybe making some
changes to avoid making it look like a complete rip-off (which, of
course, would also IMPROVE on M$Office...I've thought of a few ways to
do that).

> reason and because it is nor so fun nor so prestigious to write the
> free software community have never produced products able to compete
> with commercail software.

The GIMP competes nicely with similar commercial programs, as Rick
recently pointed out.  There's no reason why we couldn't do the same
with office apps.

> The one thing we can do is dispelling the myth than there is no Office
> suits for Linux.  I have seen many people who were very ignorant about
> what is available for Linux.  Include a catalog of what is available,
> so than they can look in and find what they need.  Better having them
> use Applixware with Linux than Word with Windows95.

Absolutely.  Maybe even include demos with SEUL????

And StarOffice *is* free for non-commercial users.  Perhaps we could
include a full copy of that?  We'd just have to say "you have to pay if
you use this in an office...."

-- 
"win95 n. 32 bit extensions for a 16 bit
patch to an 8 bit operating system originally
coded for a 4 bit microprocessor by a 2 bit
company that can't handle 1 bit of competition."