Aqua-Soft ForumsI've only just noticed this...
Why is it that MS Office apps aren't themed like other apps and the OS when you apply a visual style.
Anyone that can answer? Please don't just say "because MS sucks" or similar.
Office Apps
I dunno for sure, but maybe Microsoft uses a seperate skinning technique on the office suite rather than using the visual style.
Actually Office 2k3 is skinned based on your Visual Style. It works OK (you cant just change the theme though).
The Luna version of Office looks pretty good, though it can make you seesick.
Whenever I used an Aqua skin though, Office got gray and white, very ugly.
the only thing that's skinned for me in office xp is the titlebar and min-max-close buttons.
is open office skinnable?
Yeah, the skinning is a new thing in Office 2k3.
Well, OO.o is open source, so of course you can skin it. 
But for an easy skinning engine, no. 
Originally posted by contrasutra@Sep 19 2003, 10:23 PMBut for an easy skinning engine, no.
that's what i mean. every app should be skinnable, imo! 
the thing about oo, most people use office, and if ms decides to change formats and all, oo will need to work fast and hard on changing it as well to encourage interoperability, right?
Yes, if MS changes formats, OO.o has to catch up, but OO.o has been able to read Office 2k3 files since Beta1 of 2k3. They are ahead of the curve.
MS has switched to XML files actually (OO.o uses XML files too), so it made things easier.
Thats why I use nothing by OO.o file formats, they're completly open, so you dont run into these kinds of MS-proprietary problems down the road.
Thanks for all the info guys, but now we've moved over to file formats, does saving as xml mean that the .doc format will become readable by anything that can do xml? Also, how "standard" is the rtf filetype. If you save documents as this can most OSs/text editors read it?
the new .DOC format has XML underpinnings, making things more "logical" to decode. Its still proprietary though, so DONT save in it.
If you have just text (ie. no pictures), save to .RTF, its readable by everyone, its an open standard.
If you have just basic text (no formatting), save to .TXT.
If you have lots of different stuff, save it to a WORD 97 version of .DOC. Those are readable by almost everything.
Idealy though, use OO.o.
Also, a nice solution is if you are going to "present" the file (ie. not modify it), then export it as a PDF. OpenOffice comes with this functionality.
That way every platform can read it exactly the way you wanted them to. Very nice for things w/ pictures and graphs, and stuff.
Originally posted by contrasutra@Sep 19 2003, 10:23 PMYeah, the skinning is a new thing in Office 2k3.
Well, OO.o is open source, so of course you can skin it.
But for an easy skinning engine, no.
OpenOffice.org 2 will support Gtk+ widget styles and I believe it would support the Microsoft Visual Styles on Windows, but I'm not completely sure about the Windows part.. (I think it's safe to assume it will happen tho)
I´m about to try openOffice... but looking for a download on openoffice.org i just found "Windows\Intel" downloads... on the readme it require a Intel/Pentium PC... where can i found one for AMD processors or the Intel one should work just fine??
Originally posted by ronin@Sep 22 2003, 01:00 PMI´m about to try openOffice... but looking for a download on openoffice.org i just found "Windows\Intel" downloads... on the readme it require a Intel/Pentium PC... where can i found one for AMD processors or the Intel one should work just fine??
Intel should work just fine.