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I used all of the Softwood productivity programs, with my purchase of FinalCopy, FinalCopyII, FinalWriter (all versions and updates) FinalCalc, & FinalData at full retail price when new and first released.

I liked FinalWriter, even if it looks quite dated compared to some modern word processors. If it gets a good port to MorphOS and includes support for .doc/.docx formats, I'll definitely buy it again.

I haven't looked at Ignition or StarAm Plan yet.

I am of the opinion that we 'desperately' need an office suite that is modern and has low enough system overheads to be useable for our OS. It would be great if other applications come along later on, but if we can adapt an Open Licence Office package to MorphOS to get us started that would a first step, so my hopes are reasonable - at least I consider them to be so, and if Libre Office gets ported to our OS then that would be a great initial step, IMHO.

MorphOS should have its own Office Suite. MorphOS should have this office suite completely integrated into MorphOS. Replace Legacy with an Office Suite. It should be MorphOffice. A Bounty Project for Morph, GmbH to create MorphOffice would also be useful.

I don't know of any free options but what about Pagestream??
It is still going as far as I know. I have the Amiga version on my MorphOS system.

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I did say a few times that I was talking about me :) For me, the need for a specific target format of MS / Libre Office isn't that important, getting done what I need to do is more important. For most of what I do, I'm able to use an Amiga-ish system as my primary system so the inter platform is less necessary. I know that I could very well be unique in that.

For me, what I'd love to see is full featured, currently developed / supported native applications so that everyone could do all their work on one system without having to care about transferability.

I realize that that is a bit of a pipe dream. Unfortunately, because of the size of our platform and the resources / developer time available, I don't really see a lot of hope for getting a full Libre Office port anytime soon. It's been talked about and attempted for years but with a handful of developers working on it part time, I'm guessing we'll probably see a complete, fully bug fixed x64 MorphOS much sooner.

Sure Trevor has talked about a working beta of Libre Office but what does that actually mean? Bold, italic and underline work or something more? And that's just for OS4 where I guess it's probably another case of him throwing his money at it because he wants it. Not that I'm complaining about his efforts, I like my X1000s and X5000s but who has the money, time and skills to do the same for MorphOS?

I'm just not sure how practical it is to wait and expect it to happen "some day". Without a good office suite and a Firefox / Chrome level browser, our platform will become less and less capable of being a primary system for users. Will it eventually be relegated to playing classic games for those who want to play them on "real" hardware or even simply abandoned to play the games with emulators on our real computers that also happen to be able to do real work?

I like the platform, particularly the OS, too much to give it up so I use the native tools to do what I need to do. I'm a retired old fart not having to produce anything for anyone else so, again just for me, I don't need or care about the inter platform as long as I can do what I need to do with the tools available. The above is how I'm able to do it without having to resort to other platforms.

Once again YMMV if your needs are not similar. If they're not then none of this applies to you and you're safe to just ignore it and do what you need to do to do what you want to do. It's no skin off my back either way :)

> Morph, GmbH

Who?

> so that everyone could do all their work on one system without having to care about
> transferability

I guess for most people requiring transferability, it is needed because the files *must* also be read (or even written to) on other systems (and maybe even by other people).

> Will it eventually be relegated to playing classic games for those who want to play them on
> "real" hardware or even simply abandoned to play the games with emulators on our real
> computers that also happen to be able to do real work?

For the vast majority of "classic" games, MorphOS needs an emulator (UAE) as well. Playing those games is better done on Windows/macOS/Linux than on MorphOS anyway. And I doubt any "classic" Amiga fan considers PPC Macs to be "real" hardware.

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If such an office suite is only useful for you, and not the 99.999% of the rest of the MorphOS community who needs, or wants format exchange capabilities, why would any developer bother to work on such software?

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FinalWriter, when it is ported to MorphOS, might meet your needs for a word processor, as the new owner claims that it will be further developed with new features, and should work on PPC MorphOS soon (or maybe it already does now, but I don't think the port is past its beta stage yet).

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Yes, I agree that we might see a port of MorphOS to x64 before AmigaOS4 gets a complete and working port of Libre Office, and I think that there is only one programmer working on it, unless his twin brother is also helping him complete the port. I think that AmigaOS4 has more work done building into the OS the dependencies needed for the port of Libre Office, and since the programmer(s) working on it have zero interest in MorphOS (and maybe a dislike for MorphOS developers or users), we are even less likely to get Libre Office ported to MorphOS from the current work being done on the AmigaOS4 port.

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If you have multiple "X1000s and X5000s", maybe you have the money to fund a port of Libre Office to MorphOS? I don't know of anyone else who has more than one of each.

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The best hope for MorphOS users to be able to run modern Office Suite software is if the MorphOS Dev. Team builds the ability to run x64 Linux software directly on their x64 MorphOS systems, once MorphOS for x64 is completed, or if they make it very easy to port Linux software to MorphOS for x64, so we can quickly have tons of ported x64 Linux software, soon after MorphOS for x64 is finished.

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Why try to steer this conversation toward solutions that only satisfy your needs, instead of what will meet every MorphOS users needs? You can use what is already available to produce your documents, spreadsheets, or picture files. Either native PPC MorphOS software, or 68k Amiga software that runs on MorphOS with or without EUAE.

I doubt we will see a capable office suite in the nearer future for MorphOS.A native program could be doable as can be seen from Carsten's approaches, I mean: he came a pretty long way with his approch. The program has many flaws and limitations, but some things work and he's doing it alone. I imagine a team could progress to a way better quality. Problem is: I don't see that team, at least I cannot contribute much to it (rather lousy on C++ and you probably don't want a Hollywood office suite...).

But my best hope is with MorphOS x64 and some virtual machine. All on MorphOS would be great, but that is just not realistic, but all on one machine - that is a realistic perspective at least. Hence I still repeat myself: put all efforts to the x64 port. Once running on these machines get more software to the MorphOS side of it.
But i doubt we will see MorphOS x64 before 2020 (if at all).

all this talk about LibreOffice..

I dunno if you guys know or not,but the 'dir' and 'ls' commands for x64 MorphOS have been optimized. I heard from a top secret Dev that its so fast, right as you hit enter, a directory listing shows up.. No delay. They even wrote a timer that times the instant your finger touches the enter key and it activates the logic for the Enter key, it was 150% faster response. Its so fast, there is an easter egg in the command. Supposedly if you can hit Enter "T", MorphTRIS runs. Its a text based version of Tetris.

Just fyi.

> 'ls'

http://library.morph.zone/Shell_Commands/List

> They even wrote a timer

http://library.morph.zone/Shell_Commands/Time

> [...] MorphTRIS runs. Its a text based version of Tetris.

Morphtris has been part of MorphOS since the 1.x days.

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Andreas, your search skills are unsurpassed.

But I bet you didnt know about the text version of MorphTRIS. Rumor has it, the contents of the ls and dir command run encrypted and retrieve contents securely.

[ Edited by TheMagicM 12.06.2017 - 07:45 ]

Would ODT and MS Word import/export functionality for the new version of Finalwriter be quicker than a full port of Libre Office?

Perhaps a massive bounty would encourage Kalamatee to add it?

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It was planned however with his current financial situation many planned features are on hold.

> your search skills are unsurpassed.

I didn't search for anything.

>>> [...] MorphTRIS runs. Its a text based version of Tetris.

>> Morphtris has been part of MorphOS since the 1.x days.

> I bet you didnt know about the text version of MorphTRIS.

I bet you didn't know about the graphical version of Morphtris that's been part of MorphOS since the 1.x days :-)

> ls

2nd try: http://library.morph.zone/Shell_Commands/List

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I'm just messing with you.

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That functionality would be enough for me.
I'm not married to Office, but as I've said Open Office is of limited use to me.
So just having a functional editor that can import and export to an from other platforms would be entirely adequate for my uses.

BTW - I've joined in supporting Kalamatee, even though what I can afford to send is limited.

From what I've seen from other posters, it will be a close thing, but we might keep him off the street.

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How much more does he need? It's currently Ramadhan and I was going to donate to victims of the Saudi terrorists in Yemen but could divert some his way.

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I've been following the threads about Kalamatee and surely he must have some friends who can keep him off the streets, as well as store his computer gear for a few weeks, if he is unable to prevent the eviction. The talk of him having to sell his computers or take them to the dump because he couldn't store them anywhere was a bit melodramatic. I'm not trying to down play his plight, and I feel very bad for anyone being in his position. He probably isn't being melodramatic intentionally, but just hasn't thought clearly about all of his options, when he considered taking his computers to the dump if he couldn't sell them quickly enough after being evicted. Since there are so many Amiga/AROS users willing to support him, I am hopeful that he will be able to avoid the eviction and can keep working on his contributions to AROS and FinalWriter (which I was unaware he was working on). From what others have written, he is very productive and talented, but a long term solution (paid full time employment) needs to be found for him, so this situation does not repeat itself. I wish I could contribute to help him, but I am already tapped out this month, due to sending another friend over $1,000, which I couldn't really afford to do.

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One advantage of being an AROS developer is that you can run the OS on a variety of hardware platforms, even if just in a virtual environment. If he did not already own a portable device capable of running AROS (in whatever form), I am quite confident that someone out there would be willing to send him one.

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FinalWriter remains a 'commercial' application. Obviously, none of the involved parties will get a 'fair' compensation for their contributions to this project. Nevertheless, if people were donating privately to a developer in the hopes that they will then be able to purchase commercial software from another party in the future, that would create a rather odd and potentially complicated situation.

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If you can help someone out and then feel good about yourself for doing a (presumably) good deed, that is great. But if you largely do so because you have certain expectations regarding what the recipient will provide in return, it is worth exploring how realistic those are.

For example, there are roughly 250 USD of donations waiting to be paid out to Kalamatee for finishing the animation.datatype bounty project. Based on an email exchange two months ago, he needed to fix one bug. It's still there and the funds remain frozen. Clearly, money - no matter how much you might need it - is not the answer to everything.

Andre has made a very good point about that bounty remaining frozen.
Its a situation I wasn't aware of and it does point to some motivation issues.

One of the advantages of a bounty is that it isn't paid until the work is completed.
Subsidizing a developer without specific goals could be problematic.

And, as I hadn't really thought about what we were getting out of it, I really hadn't considered the problem.

Obviously, since Final writer is still a commercial product, time spent on that doesn't benefit us.
And while I'd like to see the AROS AMD Mesa project finished, AROS isn't my primary interest.

[ Edited by Jim 13.06.2017 - 08:47 ]

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No, but you can feel good about helping out a fellow Amiga user, in a time of need, without thought of what it will lead to in the future, as Andre stated.

I am sure that Kalamatee needs to evaluate his priorities, to make sure he is doing everything he can to avoid staying in this kind of problem situation, or allowing it to happen again, but since I don't know any of the exact circumstances, I am not going to judge him, and I will give him the benefit of doubt, that he has already done everything he can, and just hasn't been able to avoid the circumstances he finds himself subjected to.

Edit: In some threads, a few members are suggesting that Kalamatee, due to the importance and number of code commits he has produced steadily, should be the first full time AROS developer who is funded by the community. I have no idea if that is feasible, or warranted, not being a current AROS user, and not being aware of Kalamatee's contribution record.

[ Edited by amigadave 13.06.2017 - 16:21 ]

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An idea as to what he's provided to AROS over the years.

HDToolbox, Wanderer, The original Mesa port, the currently working Multicore enabled Kernel, He helped fix 64 bit support

and a few others can be seen here.

https://trac.aros.org/trac/search?q=NicJA

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And its my understanding that he his currently working on Mesa AMD support.
The work on 64 bit and multi-core support is certainly significant.

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Yeah, I knew it was significant and a lot of completed work, plus work in progress from reading the few threads about him, but not being an AROS user, I can't say from first hand experience how significant, or important to the community, like the many other users who have commented on Kalamatee's work.