The Cocoa Office

[fryke]

Okay. What I would want to see is a Cocoa Office Suite, containing the following packages (plus the ones you'd add...):

- Okito Composer (word processing)
- OmniGraffle (organizational charts)
- OmniDictionary (dictionary)
- OmniOutliner (outlined lists)
- OmniWeb (webbrowser)
- Mesa (spreadsheet)
- Daylite (PIM)

and maybe:

- TIFFany (pixel graphics application)

All of these are clean Cocoa applications that would make a great Office alternative, I guess. What do you think? What would you pay?

[uoba]

Nver seen Okito Composer before, very impressed!

As for suggestion, I'd rather hold out for OpenOffice

Dunno, some of the Omni apps have never really been much uese to me (then again neither has Powerpoint or Excel!)

(Just checked out Daylite as well!!! Wow, this knocks the socks off Entourage for me!!)

See, it is worth reading fryke's posts after all!!!

[fryke]

Hold out for OpenOffice? I ain't got three more years.

[uoba]

judging by the way it looks at the mo'!!

Dunno, I have to think about this now, after seeing Daylite!

What would the combined cost be of your option? Also, Okito doesn't appear to support Word docs, which is essential for what I do!

[fryke]

word support doesn't seem to be very far away, and that's what makes me think it'd be an ideal nice, small word processing app. the cost of this all? i don't know. some are free, some cost between 30 and 70$. i think this could be a package that would cost about 90$ for all the apps. i have no idea if the developers of the respective apps would be glad about the idea (they would have to work together), but if they can provide interoperability with MS Office (Mesa, Okito Composer), this should be a very good office suite...

[uoba]

to integrate certain facilities (if they were willing!)

Daylite contacts, projects etc shared with Okito etc would be fantastic. However, Daylite is far more extensive than Entourage, this would in effect become the main app, where everything else springs from (even Okito, as a small Word processor for Daylite).

If it could be done with brand continuity (looking like they belong and also actually want to work together) then I would be happy, even if it were just to get Okito and Daylite.

Let's lobby the manufacturers!!

[serpicolugnut]

Daylight looks nice, but it really needs an conduit to sync with Palm. At least with Entourage, I know a conduit will be released pretty soon now...

I've used Mesa too. For the money, it's a great Excel replacement.

Personally, I'd really love it if Apple rewrote (and rebuilt) AppleWorks from the ground up in Cocoa. That would really serve as a wake up call for Cocoa development if, in a matter of about a year, Apple could compeltely rewrite an app like AppleWorks and bring increased functionality to it. I doubt Apple would ever do this, as they still tout Carbon as a first class API for Mac OS X.

[fryke]

AppleWorks could sure be *the* cheapo replacement for Office. But I smell a chance here for the 'smaller' developers at Omni and the rest. I think all of the aforementioned applications behave very well (first class Aqua UI compliance).

The *best* thing about this slapped-together-office-suite would be that each player (developer) can make its part the best of breed.

Proteus could be included, too.

I've seen many tries to replace MS Office. Most of the attempts spring from the OpenSource development for Linux, all of them failed so far.

OpenOffice is the best effort as of yet, but it's also too similar to MS Office (and not *there* yet for OS X). I think a competitor should both be compatible but also more *friendly*. OmniWeb, for example, may not be up to par with MSIE for Mac OS X, standards compliance wise. But what its users (and some PAYING users, too!) love is that it seems so much friendlier. Also, the developers are reachable by mail, they implement stuff that users want (if it makes any sense at all and is - in fact - feasible).

I say: We should set up an email to those developers about this.