OpenOffice for Android

[Ratteler]

Any chance in hell? Any one working on ANYTHING? I know there is a Quickoffice for Android already, but I would rather pay a developer working with FOSS code than some one with propriety stuff.

 

[ohzopants]

OpenOffice is partly written in java already and Android is a java virtual machine... so I imagine it would not be an overly complex port. But then again I'm no programmer.

Sun owns java and "owns" OO and still makes significant contributions to the project so it wouldn't suprise me to see them do it at some point down the line, they definitely seem like the best candidate to deliver such goodness.

Since their name is on this awesome MS Office alternative, they also have an interest in seeing widespread adoption of an OO portable document viewer/editor.

(If anyone at Sun is reading this: Pretty please!)

But then again, I expect a very polished google docs experience right off the bat, so any OO port will likely have some serious catching up to do.

 

[Ratteler]

Thanks for the reply. Google Doc's is VERY cool. I use it a lot. But not as much as OpenOffice. G'Docs is great text entry, but is a regular nightmare for text layout. Modern Word processing is about more than just spell checking. It's actually a limited form of DeskTop Publishing, and this is where G'Docs falls seriously short. There's also the "Online" problem with G'Docs. If the G1 has GEARS support for G'Doc's I would probably be Ok with that for a while, but as a New Yorker who relies on public transportation that travels underground, the time of the day the G1 will be most useful to me, it won't have ANY internet access.

 

[ohzopants]

I'm with you all the way about google docs not being as good and powerful as a full office suite and I would love to see open office ported to android.

But, seriously, how much "desktop publishing" and text layout are you really going to be doing on your phone? No offense, but that doesn't seem like a valid argument here.

Good question about gears though... not sure if Android supports it. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this.

Sorry, I can't relate with the working on public transit part; I'm a civil servant. I hardly do any work when I'm actually at the office, never mind during my commute.

 

[SHodges]

It could get ported, I mean it's technically feasible, but as others have pointed out, I'm not sure what the motivation would be. Most people really aren't going to be doing any kind of typing or spread sheet stuff on their phone, and even if they did, Google would probably push them towards Docs before a locally installed piece of software.

 

[Ratteler]

Just giving this topic a bit of a bump.

What I'm really looking for is something that will at least let me edit basic html on the phone.

My acid test is can I create a decent Web Page from scratch, while on the go.

It's always pissed me off that in spite of the fact that my phone is 3-4x more powerful than my old P166 Laptop, I can't do just as much with it.

With a 4Gb MicroSD, a G1 would beat my old Lappy in every category except screen resolution.

I'm hoping the openness of Android would encourage people to make a Laptop alternative rather than just a suped up pocket watch.

 

[bradley1865]

I check this forum every day for news and to see what others are thinking. This is the first time I feel the desire to post. I fully agree!I want a phone that will be a laptop on my hip without having to pay 600 to 1000 dollars for a windows mobile device. I use my phone professionally and I comute daily. I like being able to get work done on the train. I really hope the Android folks pay some attention to us adults and not just the Xbox teens.

 

[porquepine]

One thing that I feel that HTC/Google did well is recognized that individuals with the Blackberry prefer a qwerty keyboard verses tru-type or virtual screens such as iphone.

I also use my phone (Blackberry) professionally and I have thrown in my hat to pre-order the Android. I am putting alot of faith in this phone and hope that the openness of the platform will offer up some great applications.

I need some sort of program that will allow me to view xcel documents, word documents etc. I really do not desire to have Microsoft on my phone- I have had enough of their problems (ie: Windows Mobile) but OpenOffice would be a great solution!

I agree with the sentiment- Google and HTC made this phone with business in mind, I can only hope that the developers continue to develop software that will continue to push the envelope forward.

 

[coyote121403]

One thing that I feel that HTC/Google did well is recognized that individuals with the Blackberry prefer a qwerty keyboard verses tru-type or virtual screens such as iphone.

I also use my phone (Blackberry) professionally and I have thrown in my hat to pre-order the Android. I am putting alot of faith in this phone and hope that the openness of the platform will offer up some great applications.

I need some sort of program that will allow me to view xcel documents, word documents etc. I really do not desire to have Microsoft on my phone- I have had enough of their problems (ie: Windows Mobile) but OpenOffice would be a great solution!

I agree with the sentiment- Google and HTC made this phone with business in mind, I can only hope that the developers continue to develop software that will continue to push the envelope forward.

I too am throwing in my BB for the G1. I could really use excel or some spread sheeting program for budgeting and stuff. Or even to import an excel sheet as a text file for work approvals?

 

[punkzanyj]

I checked out the Open Office threads, and they said "no go" on Android. Something about how it was backbreaking just to port it to Mac, that they're not interested in mobile, and that OOO isn't designed to be used with anything except a regular keyboard and a regular mouse. A touchscreen, trackball, and a modified keyboard is just too much for them to handle, I guess.
Keep in mind that OOO is free, so they probably have a very limited amount of people on their team, they probably have to be very selective about what side projects they take on outside of improving OOO.

Google docs is on Android, but it's read-only. Why, I don't know. I'd rather have them create a GoogleDocsMobile or GoogleDocsLite that allows you some very basic functionality, and limited formatting. The Mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PPT don't have all the bells and whistles of the desktop versions, so there's no reason GoogleDocs needs to either.

 

[kb2002]

@Bradley.

What WinMO device costs $600 - $1000 outside of the upcoming Sony Xperia X1?

T-mo has had The SDA, MDA, Wing, Dash and Shadow. I have owned 2 of those devices (MDA, then Shadow) and have used BOTH to work on spreadsheets and documents for my job.
None of these devices cost more than $350.

And then what's this thing I heard of called Blackberry? I don't know. Probably another toy phone for Xbox teens (because only teens play Xbox).

Hyperbole FTW!!

Or even if you're referring to something such as the HTC Advatage or Shift which actually is more like a palm-top rather than a PDA... G1 is not comparable to those phones. As much as I love G1, it is not that poweful or all-inclusive.

 

[Sundog]

It occurs to me that even if they did port it, the app would be rather huge.

 

[simmcrd]

Just giving this topic a bit of a bump.

What I'm really looking for is something that will at least let me edit basic html on the phone.

My acid test is can I create a decent Web Page from scratch, while on the go.

It's always pissed me off that in spite of the fact that my phone is 3-4x more powerful than my old P166 Laptop, I can't do just as much with it.

With a 4Gb MicroSD, a G1 would beat my old Lappy in every category except screen resolution.

I'm hoping the openness of Android would encourage people to make a Laptop alternative rather than just a suped up pocket watch.

I too am greatly wanting Open Office a la android, but we must remember that processing power probably is not the primary restraint - battery life is.

I would love to run full featured GNU Emacs on my G1, but I would be lucky to get 4 hours battery life. Our old laptop NiCad batteries were about the size of a small box of spaghetti. Our G1 battery is smaller than a book of matches.

For Open Office (or any other desktop/laptop app) to run effectively on Android it must:

- be compilable/linkable/assemble-able (is that a word?)
- consider the small screen size
- be cognizant of the nuances of the touch screen interface
- utilise the OS hooks (i.e. Android libraries) for power mgmt.

In other words, it won't be an easy port, especially with Android being a brand new developers platform.

 

[punkzanyj]

I agree with the sentiment- Google and HTC made this phone with business in mind, I can only hope that the developers continue to develop software that will continue to push the envelope forward.

I disagree, I don't think this phone was made for business people. Which is not to say they can't use it, but think about it,
- No Exchange Support
- No desktop sync to anything business related (Lotus Notes, Office, Works)
- No Tethering
- No Tasks, no To Do List
- Are there any business apps on the market at all right now?

If this is a business device, I wonder what industry needs to have handy access to YouTube videos??

I think this phone was developed for...whoever wants it. The commercial they have on right now shows all kinds of people. I think that's another way they've followed through with the "Open" motif. It's all about customizing it for you.

I'd like some basic editing of word and excel docs. Then I can truly ditch my Wing. Right now I use the Wing at the Gym for my workout log, but as soon as GoogleDocs becomes a downloadable app for the phone, I'll be able to retire the Wing altogether.

 

[drustvold]

I think we can admit that nobody is going to sit down and try and write a whole report or anything of that nature. If you are, well i guess thats your propagative.

However being able to open, edit, and save/publish a word/text document or make a last second change to a power point presentation minuets before you have to present (such as when you boss calls you and tells you "We changed the release date! Fix it!") is invaluable.

Or making a small html tweak to your site because you published a broken link and you won't be back to your desktop for some time.

There are countless little reasons to have this kind of support, and they're the kinds of things that make you go from a "good employee" to a "did you see what ___ was able to do, s/hes a life saver!"

 

[ckthunda]

all of the issues that are being stated are going to be resolved with software thankfully to developers so its really only a matter of time. And to the comment that the shift and advantage are the only 2 phones that are priced higher than 500 bux.. your crazy!! no offense but do your research the US gsm version of the HTC Diamond was 699.00. Its just a matter of time till all of these problems like tethering and office ports and stereo bluetooth and exchange and the motion sensor. I can really go on and on.. Patience is a virtue

 

[sh0ck3r]

i think you first need to consider how much of your 100MB internal memory it will take up... unless google offloads files onto the flash memory... keep in mind that after the OS and a few apps are installed, you've only got about 55MB left to work with.

 

[atelerix]

I think we have a good shot of getting a feature-rich office suite for Android. I'm a long-time PalmOS user, and after downloading and installing a variety of Android apps since I received my G1, they strike me as relatively comparable in average size to PalmOS apps. On my Palm TX, I currently use Mobi-System's OfficeSuite. It has the following features and components:

1. A full-featured word processor which allows the creation and editing of MS-Word, RTF, TXT, or Doc, features in-line image support, a spell checker, multiple truetype fonts, etc.

2. A full-featured spreadsheet which allows the creation and editing of MS-Excel, XML and CSV spreadsheets, customizable cell fonts, borders, shading, formulas, and basic graphing functions.

3. An Adobe Acrobat viewer capable of displaying Pdf files and intelliegently reflowing Pdf files with OCR'd text files to best fit a small screen.

4. An Access database viewer which, while not allowing creation of databases from scratch on the mobile device, does support addition/editing of individual records and viewing/searching/filtering.

5. A PowerPoint viewer with limited editing capabilities (re-ordering slides, editing notes).

6. A basic FTP client do upload and download document files.

This entire suite, with all associated applets and libraries and a half-dozen Truetype fonts take up a grand total of 11.58 megs on my Palm. I'm confident that a similar package for Android would weigh in close to the same size, and though it would be a sizeable chunk of available memory, IMO it's definitely worth the memory real-estate.

Anyway, I think it's just a matter of time before someone codes a launcher that will let us copy apps to the memory card, leave a shortcut to them in the launcher, and will seamlessly copy them into onboard memory while they run and erase them from onboard memoery upon exit. Before PalmOS supported program execution from external memory, such a third-party launcher was produced and worked fairly seamlessly, even under a non-multitasking environment.

 

[twilightwolf90]

We can now load apps to the SD Card. (Check out androidguys.com: Android has been Jailbroken. It's just a matter of time before someone codes a program for auto-doing this, for lack of a better term)

I am not a very good coder (equivalent to a 1st semester college CS in Java), but I am interested in coding a word processor at least. If I can find the parsing algorithms for Word, rtf, odt, etc.

I'll let you know if I get anywhere.

 

[ppcinfo]

I agree with a lot of the comments in this thread. I'm business traveler and would like to use the G1 phone for my business activities. Having some sort of Office Suite of products would be great for the G1. I also like Google docs for quick access to basic information (which I used on my Windows Mobile device), however, it's very limiting when you can't edit the information on a mobile device.

Here's what I would like to see:

- Improving Google Docs for Android, allowing editing on the handset.
- Ability to view MS-Word and MS-Powerpoint files (editing if possible).
- Ability to view PDF files directly on Android.

Having this capability would certainly push the G1 into the business arena!

ppcinfo

 

[mudarb]

I agree with most of the postings that using the mobile phone to write sophisticated and well formatted documents is not applicable. But let's keep in mind that Android is not being used on mobile phones only, today some tablet readers (like iRobot for example) are using Android as operating system. I also heard that many Android powered tablets are on their way to the market within the coming few months. In this case, a full fledged office suite like OpenOffice will be a must.

 

[rocktscientst]

So Android 3.0 for tablets is coming. The main reasons for not having OpenOffice for Android seemed to be processing power and practicality (due to small screen sizes). Now can anyone think of a reason why we can't have OpenOffice for Android?

 

[Strings]

I've actually been debating between getting a Samsung Galaxy tab, or a netbook of some form. Main reason is to get back into writing: the basic lack of word proscessor for Android is making me lean towards the netbook...

 

[Copleo]

I like being able to get work done on the train.

"Work"? Get serious. Get a laptop.

 

[takeshi]

"Work"? Get serious. Get a laptop.

Get serious. Not all "work" has to be done on a laptop.