As if you did not hear already, KOffice is more alive than ever. Its honestly brewing with activity. Krita has gotten more new features in the last couple of months then are set to go into Longhorn and the commit rate is growing each week. It shows; there has been commercial interrest in making KOffice stay ahead of the curve. There now is a competition for ideas with a prize for the best or top-3 totalling $1000.
While I certainly feel I belong to the KOffice group, I'm not in the organization and I won't be reviewing the entries. Hell, I might even enter myself.
What I see the competition is asking for is cool interaction methods and workflows. I kind of expect some will detail the new menu thingy that m1crosoft is pushing for KOffice, but thats not very innovative, now is it?
What would be nice is if people do research and propose a really nice way to do everyday things which currently take too much manual labour. Some ideas that could use more research and pondering might be these;
* Based on a page-template reorganize a page in KWord, with all its frames and colors and everything to look like that template. The proposal should go into things like how to figure out what to do when not enough, or too much text is available.
* Come up with an easy to use and innovative way to select objects that are overlaying. So if you have an image and a text area and a big colored frame all at approximately the same spot, how can you alter the settings of a frame that below the others.
Well, you can see that I'm a KWord fan, but you get the idea. So, openGL interaction methods and other cool ideas are rewarded with a prize; if you take the time to actually make a little more then just an idea out of your ideas. 
Now if only a company would hire me to do KWord developing, that would really be something!
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Selecting overlapping objects, an idea
> * Come up with an easy to use and innovative way to select objects
> that are overlaying. So if you have an image and a text area and a
> big colored frame all at approximately the same spot, how can you
> alter the settings of a frame that below the others.
At least for vector graphics applications, I'd love the following way:
1. When clicking, you select the topmost-layered object.
2. When clicking the second time onto the object, you select the one that lies below that.
3. When clicking the third time, you select the 3rd-to-top object.
...
x. When clicking the xth time, and the currently selected object is the one at the bottom, re-select the topmost one.
Whenever an object is deselected and the user clicks there again then the cycle starts at the topmost object again.
That would work great with pure graphics objects, IMHO. Text frames need some additional thoughts, because you can modify the selection within the text frame with simple left-clicking that would normally be bound to switching object selections. Maybe only proceed to the object below the text frame if the text selection wouldn't change. (Likewise with all objects that support left-click modification. Naturally, actions invoked by dragging and right-clicking are not affected, don't change the selection except when the click is outside the selection, and work as usual.)
And, of course, some option in the context menu would be nice as well.
Now the only thing left is to wait for my prize money, no?
this reply lacks a proper title
"I kind of expect some will detail the new menu thingy that m1crosoft is pushing for KOffice, but thats not very innovative, now is it?"
I kind of expect the other half to detail Apple's iWork... but let's not be overly pessimistic
.
Innovation from the bad guys is still innovation
I would just like to point out that just because ideas have come out of MS or Apples new products is no reason to discard them.
At the very least, Apple's dedication to simplicity in their iWork suite is commendable, and MS has done some research and come up with a new UI for Office which may work and may not, but it will be a kick in the pants for many people and is a step forward if only because they decided to think outside the box a little.
indeed. imho the ui they
indeed. imho the ui they designed is a good idea. original, and it might just work. it has several advantages over menu's (which imho suck). acutally i can't think of another way of getting rid of menu's...