Hello! I know its been quite some time since I last posted on the blog, but I've been occupied on work and you know how that goes. 

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time either on programming so its coming slow. That how it goes...

Anyhow both polls I've posted have ended and the results are:

Most acceptable name: Petals Office

Most desired features: OCR to document, Speech to text

I liked Petals Office myself so thats going to be the name of the program. I will try to implement both other features on the program... The road ahead is going to be difficult. :D

 

Hello again!

As a byproduct of the work I am doing, I began an audio player [software], using wxWidgets and C++ [same old,same old] plus an open source cross platform library named Audiere . Using that it will be able to play Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, WAV [uncompressed], AIFF and some other quite uncommon formats like MOD, S3M, XM and IT.

Not a lot of work is needed, from where I am already. But I would like to implement a feature so that the player is able to retrieve the lyrics [based on the files tags], from online sources, displaying them while the song is played.

Here is a screenshot:

Other main features would be, all-in-one window interface, multi playlist handling,no needed installer, lightweight and a small implementation of a media library.

I am not sure about the Transcode [tab on the picture], but if its not that, it will be a tag editor.

To the right direction

Today I checked out the new KOffice, which is totally moving to the right direction. Well or I am :)

Just check the screenshots posted:

KWord screenshots, KSpread screenshots, KPresenter screenshots, Krita screenshots, Karbon screenshots

They've obviously began using a sidebar, which accommodates various toolbars. A nice improvement, plus whats shown there dynamically changes. Very nice indeed. Hmmm... Well if it was a tabbed suite I'd have a lot to consider... 

As you can see from the questionnaire posted some time ago, I am planning to add some advanced features. I think that most of them should be part of a modern office suite regardless how many users actually need them or may use them. 

Some of the options I've researched in the past and I believe that when the time comes, they will be ripe and ready for everyday usage. These are OCR to document, with automatic layout recognition and a simple speech to text implementation. Of course and as always don't expect that these features will be able to stand up to commercial programs. But as anyone can figure out, in time they will get better, as long long as I get user feedback.

I hope they will prove useful. 

A roadmap of the program.

Well, it speaks for itself. A thing at a time. Easier for me to develop, since the first part is the difficult one, but it contains a lot of the code for the later ones.

Work in progress and possible License?

Work: I am currently working on the ODF lib of the program, so don't expect more screenshots soon. Although the current appearance is more advanced than the one shown on those I've uploaded so far, I've decided to keep some things to myself till I can produce a working pre-alpha application.

Plans: A road map will be uploaded in some days, showing the time schedule and the general planning. All I can say now, is that it has been decided to implement the "writer" part first. This will be available to anyone who wants to test it (alpha stage still).

License: Most people have asked me if its going to be a free program. Well, I have two thoughts-options which are

1. A single FREE version for everybody.
2. Two different versions, a FREE one for home users, and a paid one for companies, probably containing some of the extra features that could be implemented [probable license cost 10€]. If this is the case a percentage of the income will be redirected to all open source libraries I've used for the development of the program [donations, distributed accordingly to the importance]. I was also thinking that a same amount could go to a charity of my choosing. The rest would be used for the maintenance of the dedicated website and as funding for the continuing development of the program.

As you can understand this is a lot of work for one programmer, who is doing this as a hobby.

Any comments are welcome!

Explaining the GUI

The design of most commercial office suites has stayed almost the same for more than a decade, or have undergone a simple retouch, while the programming tools available provide us the opportunity to have a more elegant, user friendly and productive user interface. Just remember how your old browser used to look like and imagine such changes to your office applications.
What we aspire to do here, is to create a tabbed office application, which integrates all functionality in a single program. Imagine being able to create side by side, a document report together with your spreadsheet and the presentation. You are also able to divide the screen any way you like, so you can view other documents while creating yours. This is more advantageous with larger monitors, where you will be able to view [and edit] full page real size documents side by side.
Take a look at the screenshot bellow. The toolbar on the right changes according to the document type that has the focus, providing all the tools you need in an elegant way. It is also divided into panels, which you can hide [or fold to their caption bar].