OpenOffice.org for mobile OS Android?

[Black93300ZX]

Well, as most of you probably know, Google's mobile operating system "Android" will release on October 22nd. The SDK is free, and there are options for selling (or distributing for free) any program through Google's own marketplace. One of the main features missing, as noted by most who looked over the phone and OS, is the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents. Are there any plans to expand OpenOffice to Android, or could there be? It's Linux-based and open source, so I figured this would be a good fit. Thanks.

[ccornell]

Android is a custom written Java VM running on top of a tiny Linux kernel. All apps are Java. OOo is not Java, so that's probably the first hurdle (of many).

My guess is that the prob with OOo in Android will be (at least for now) the same issue as porting it to Symbian, OpenMoko, Maemo or any of the other palmtop and phone OSes... space and processing power.

[AndrewZ]

Also OpenOffice.org is not designed for limited user interfaces. Instead, OOo assumes you have a standard keyboard and mouse. Making a change such this would be a significant undertaking. It has taken about 5 years just to get OOo working on Mac OS X in native Aqua mode.

[Black93300ZX]

Well, as for a full keyboard it has it, and a touch screen and track ball can do everything a mouse can... But thanks for the extended info, didn't know that much about Android.

[AndrewZ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Andr ... device.jpg

Looking at that image, I see the keyboard is missing many keys. Standard keyboards have over 100 keys. Also, OpenOffice.org doesn't know what to do with a touch screen. If I understand you saying Android has both a touch screen and a track ball, then the problem is OpenOffice.org doesn't know how to handle multiple pointers. Finally, smartphones have tiny screens compared to laptops.

Compare this challenge to Mozilla's obstacles to create a web browser (MiniMo) for smart phones

[ipofan]

how about any open office viewers?

[TheGurkha]

how about any open office viewers?

Little point in this with the easy PDF export within OOo.

[ItTechy]

Hi,
Personally owning a G1, I like having an open source coded phone, to a degree. I develop and have been a Motorola Developer for quite some time, and the Linux stumbling block of the MotoRokr Z1 GSM, seems to be the like with the Android OS.

It is indeed very difficult to say the least to port any C/C++ apps to a Linux Based Kernel, whilst in the palm of your hand! About the time you think you have something that may work, there is always a seemingly undeniable, one piece of code that just can't be made to do the trick; not saying it can't be done, but it's very difficult to say the least.

While I really like the phone’ OS, and ability to create all sorts of "neat" little apps, its very demise may be if we can't port some of what people who are after "neat", "fun to use", and also want a Smart Phone!

This is the real trick! , and really right now there isn't one that fills all these desires of the consumers; well a laptop with a VOIP phone I guess, kind of hard to keep on your belt clip!
It's a real challenge and will be very interesting to say the least to see what we all can come up with!

ItTechy

[ubuntu_user]

When there is a will there is a way. Apparently OpenOffice.org does not care about Android platform yet ! There is no technical excuse why OOo would not be able to port this fine app suite onto Android; it has a very well define and robust SDK. Cross compile C/C++ is not a problem either; people doing it for Android all the time, where do you think the Android OS was built from? Yes, from cross compile C sources of the Unix/Linux.

Wait until MS Office viewer/editor grew on this platform and OOo will loose ground again. Mobile platform is growing (fast) and I think it is time OOo start thinking about supporting it.

Cheers,

[Mark Nelson]

The mobile version at http://www.portableapps.com requires a 1 gig flash drive. The official version requires your hard drive. How big a hard drive does ANDROID provide?

[ericb]

Hi,

Not sure things are that complicated, but if this can help, the OpenOffice.org Education Project proposes to start porting OpenOffice.org to Android.

BTW: could even port OOo4Kids in this case, more simple imho (see http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page )

Proposed plan :

* Student from engineers schools working on that
* Suggested process : add a new item on the Education Project Effort wiki page : http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... ect/Effort

Our need is :

- receive one dedicated machine (see donations below)
- further information : can be discussed on IRC ( #education.openoffice.org , server is irc.freenode.net )


For donations, see :

- http://wiki.ooo4kids.org (search Donate)
- or http://download.ooo4kids.org/en/donate )

Eric Bachard,
Lead
OpenOffice.org Education Project

[ericb]

As I wrote on my blog (same than here), after further investigations, I now know this is not possible to port OpenOffice.org on Android, "as it".

Android is Java and even if there is an NDK (N for native), an application entirely written in C++ will not work.

Nevertheless, this is an intersting idea to analyze what can be done, an I'll try to find students working on that, e.g. writing a simple reader, in Java, and based on some OpenOffice.org code or, maybe better (this has to be confirmed), using the ODF toolkit.

More interesting, in a discussion, one asked me : is it really an OpenOffice.org project, but an ODF project instead ? the future will tell us.

Strange to discover an application owned by Sun / Oracle cannot run in something invented by the same company. But maybe I missed something. Will continue to search anyway, because I'd like to understand why Google forces people to use Java only.

Eric Bachard

[DrewJensen]

Hello Eric, et al

Came across this application that seemed to fit right into the conversation.

Androoffice, which it seems will be available closed source, commercial in (from) the Android Marketplace exclusively.
Looks like Androoffice, from reading the About page on the website - that's all - is the product of a couple of students working on their advanced degree project. [Now where have I heard of that before ]

- to the point of this thread.

IMO a project such as a FOSS ODF viewer/editor for Android (or smartphones in general) is certainly relevant to OpenOffice.org.

It also sure seems to me that this type of project is a natural fit for the student development projects you have going in the Education project. I would certainly be surprised also if upon inquiry you didn't find mentors (faculty) from the different java/odf communities, such as the odftoolkit folks, or so I would assume.

Speaking of a Java only ODF editor...hushhh (The Impress Prototype)...

Drew

[exegete77]

I just purchased HTC Hero with Android, so I too would be interested in a mobile version.

[jleeper]

The answer in my opinion isn't OO in Android, but an open app similar to Documents To Go

The programming and GUI environment of Android is so dissimilar from the enviroment OO is written in/for that porting OO would be an excercise in futility. I'd say a OOAndroid app should only cover the most used OO features.

[mriosv]

I'm think is much near to have a PC-phone, that have a great sofware running on a phone.

[dwhs]

That would be great, I'm switching from my iphone to android next month.

[MathiasTCK]

Hi,

Not sure things are that complicated, but if this can help, the OpenOffice.org Education Project proposes to start porting OpenOffice.org to Android.

Eric Bachard,
Lead
OpenOffice.org Education Project

What's the status?

[kenjennings]

I'm in the queue to get an entourage eDGe (http://www.entourageedge.com). It is an Android device running a netbook-sized color LCD display and an eInk reader screen. While it can accept an external USB keyboard I don't really care about editing ODF docs. I would be completely happy with just a good, accurate reader/player for ODF files. Supporting Write and Calc files would be good, Draw would be great, and Impress would be AWESOME.

[MathiasTCK]

I'm in the queue to get an entourage eDGe (http://www.entourageedge.com). It is an Android device running a netbook-sized color LCD display and an eInk reader screen. While it can accept an external USB keyboard I don't really care about editing ODF docs. I would be completely happy with just a good, accurate reader/player for ODF files. Supporting Write and Calc files would be good, Draw would be great, and Impress would be AWESOME.

Interesting choice. What OS version does it run?

I figure OpenOffice should target Android 1.6, and 2.0+. It should not assume the existence of the google apps, but it should integrate into the OS by registering what Intents it can handle, so any app, including the google apps, can launch OpenOffice to handle stuff.

[kenjennings]

I'm in the queue to get an entourage eDGe (http://www.entourageedge.com). It is an Android device running a netbook-sized color LCD display and an eInk reader screen. While it can accept an external USB keyboard I don't really care about editing ODF docs. I would be completely happy with just a good, accurate reader/player for ODF files. Supporting Write and Calc files would be good, Draw would be great, and Impress would be AWESOME.

Interesting choice. What OS version does it run?

I figure OpenOffice should target Android 1.6, and 2.0+. It should not assume the existence of the google apps, but it should integrate into the OS by registering what Intents it can handle, so any app, including the google apps, can launch OpenOffice to handle stuff.

Their support page reports:
https://www.entourageedge.com/support/i ... ticleid=43

The initial software will run Android 1.6. We will update the enTourage eDGe community when we know what our time line is for an Android update. We know this is important to folks who want to develop or add applications.

[t0m_dR]

here's an idea: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/ubun ... dset-safe/

[moscro]

I know this thread has gotten a little cold, but I am a student developer interested in such a project. Most of my development experience involves embedded systems with absolutely no operating system. C and C++ were primarily my focal languages, but I'm ramping up for development with Java. C++ and Java, it seems, are very similar. I look forward to creating new and fun apps in my free time.

I've recently purchased an HTC Incredible, and was saddened at the sight of Androoffice. First, I love free things. Regardless of the price, I don't want to pay for this particular app. This is especially true when, on the PC side anyway, software suites such as OpenOffice exist. Second, from the reviews that I see on the Marketplace, it is designed poorly, and has a lot of bugs that are still standing. The next nearest competitor to an app like this is Documents To Go, which is very pricey.

I'd like to get my feet wet with a little bit of development with my phone. Naturally, my first step would be just to view a document. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of documentation on how to decode a .doc or .odt file. I'll be looking through the code supplied in the repositories here, but if anyone knows offhand it would be very helpful.

I've written a simple Huffman encoder/decoder before, so it wouldn't be hard to take that a step further and implement that in a mobile app. However, I'm having trouble finding if .doc files really are encoded using Huffman, or if there is a different method that I should research. Additionally, I know that someone out there has written libraries to do this for me. Any pointers in the right direction with regard to sample libraries that I can implement, or even just a conceptual explanation on the encoding of these file types would be nice. I can write the code from there.

[putt1ck]

For ODF input you want to talk to the ODF people:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc ... rev=office

There are almost certainly base libraries you could work from, depending on development language of choice; posting your question on the OpenDocument Users list will also get input on whether an Android ODF project is underway somewhere you could assist on. Or not...

Chris

[mauriceh780]

I have read this thread, and most of the objections, about Java, etc. are not the real issue.
The only important factor that has to be addressed is "What to trim?"
Clearly a diminished version has to be trimmed down.
What to exclude?
What to include?

OTOH, the point has become somewhat moot:
Google Docs allow us to edit/create and collaborate on documents, from our smart phones, and open and save in ODF formats.

Seeing that this is so successful a solution, one wonders:
Is it even worthwhile to continue to develop Open Office as a stand alone applications suite?
Perhaps the time and efforts would be better spent on a cloud application suite?

[ccornell]

Is it even worthwhile to continue to develop Open Office as a stand alone applications suite?

What you're forgetting is that only a small portion of the people on this planet have broadband Internet access (something really required to make an online solution work). The vast majority - of which a lot are OOo users - have dial-up, or high latency satellite internet at best - this includes areas in the USA and Canada as well as parts of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia etc etc. Australian users are usually on tight bandwidth caps even though they have broadband... and so on.

So, OpenOffice.org as a standalone office suite is an important part of the overall picture... it's not the only solution, but it's certainly still very valid.

As for the original intent of this thread... OOo on Android... I still believe it's not possible/practical to do a native port/compile with the existing codebase. OOo as an office suite as it is now, is not practical for Android (for a lot of reasons.. it's too big for the Android architecture to start with). That said, there is nothing stopping anyone from writing an ODF viewer (or even an editor) that would accurately display spreadsheets, text documents and even presentations, other than the programming skills needed to develop the Java/Android app to do this. The information needed to implement an ODF viewer is publicly available... the Android SDK is easy enough to install and get started with (I've just recently installed it myself).

[sswam]

I wouldn't buy an Android phone (or iPhone) because they do not allow you to get root. I bought a Nokia N900 phone which runs Maemo Linux, based on Debain, and I am very happy with it. OpenOffice does not yet run directly in Maemo although it would be possible to port it, however there is an "Easy Debian" package which installs a true Debian system in a chroot. The image comes with OpenOffice 3.1.1, GIMP and some other apps, and it should be possible to install fairly much any binary package from Debian/ARM in this chroot. I have overclocked the N900 to 1.15 Ghz using the "power-kernel" package (with no ill effects), and OpenOffice performs well at this speed. It also works tolerably at the default speed of 600Mhz.

So yes, on a N900 you can run `apt-get install kernel-power-flasher easy-deb-chroot` to install an over-clockable kernel, and a Debian chroot including OpenOffice.org. Very easy, and works well. So, throw your Android phone into the sea, and get a N900!

It's possible to run a Debian chroot under Android (this involves hacking the phone to get root, of course). So it would be possible to run OpenOffice on an Android phone too, however it's not a one-liner to install it, and it violates the EULA or whatever I suppose.

It would not be so very hard to port / compile OpenOffice to run directly on Maemo, since Maemo is based on Debian and most packages can be installed or ported, however there's no need as the Debian chroot version works well, and the chroot is useful for other things too.

[sswam]

As for the original intent of this thread... OOo on Android... I still believe it's not possible/practical to do a native port/compile with the existing codebase. OOo as an office suite as it is now, is not practical for Android (for a lot of reasons.. it's too big for the Android architecture to start with).

I don't agree with this, it's very possible and reasonably practical to run OOo on a phone, and I am doing so right now. OOo does run just fine on my Nokia N900 (preferably at 1.15Ghz) with Maemo Linux, under the Debian chroot. Writer starts reasonably quickly (about 40 seconds cold, 30 seconds warm). It is responsive, and doesn't seem too cramped at 800x480. Full-screen mode works nicely. As far as I know, this is a build direct from Debian/ARM, it's hasn't been optimized for this phone, and has not even been compiled specifically for this particular ARM chip; so we can expect similar decent performance for other large apps.

I just tested it with a medium-sized document (a spec we're using here at work), and it seems to handle it without any trouble. The import took a little while, but rendering and editing is fast. Very nice!

Perhaps you are talking about a purely Java-based OOo running natively on Android. I don't know how much work it would be to port OOo like that, or whether it would be faster or slower than the Debian-based OOo I am using on Maemo.

These new phones are as powerful as the PCs and laptops of not long ago, and they're getting stronger more quickly than laptops or PCs I think. My N900 can run fairly much anything out of Debian, i.e. over 10,000 packages of quality software. If it can play quake 3, I do expect that it can edit documents! In fact I think that the 1.15Ghz ARM does outperform my 1Ghz core 2 duo laptop in some cases. The only problem is, it's a little short on RAM (256Mb + swap), but it is truly more than good enough to run OOo. The RAM increases in newer ARM SoCs based on the cortex A9, they also have multiple cores, and some Android phones already have more RAM than my phone. These ARM-based systems typically have lower RAM access latency than a PC because the RAM is on the SoC, so I reckon in some ways they should be able to run faster than PCs.

Of course, all the software we are running on these phones, from Linux through Debian, X11, the desktop environments and especially OpenOffice, all this software is very far from efficient. With more efficient software, these phones could perform much much faster. The ARM itself is about 144 times faster than the original Acorn ARM2 processors used in the Archimedes computers, and those computers could do desktop publishing very well. The new ARMs are also much faster than the PCs that ran earlier versions of Microsoft office. In fact, an early version of MS Office running in qemu (doing x86 emulation on the ARM) would probably out-perform OOo on the phone, in spite of the processor emulation, because most people don't bother to write efficient fast code these days. OOo is a very heavy program, but it's also a very useful and functional program. I'm glad it does work ok on my phone.

[ccornell]

The Nokia N series are not in the same device class as the Android and iPhone... the N series are very much palmtop computers and the OS is designed that way with stylus navigation etc. You don't (usually) get a stylus with an Android phone.

On top of that, until recently, the average screen resolution for most Android phones was 320x240 or 480x320... much too small to effectively work with a full blown OOo install. The recent 800x480 Android phones are disputed to even run at that resolution.. claims are that they are more like 650x390. I have issues at times with OOo dialogs on my 1024x600 netbook.. I can't imagine what a nightmare that would be on a 320x240 screen... or even a 480x320 screen.

As I said, I believe it's not possible to do a native (Android) port/compile with the existing code base. It is simply not compatible with the Android architecture (Java vs C, impractical screen resolutions, no stylus for navigation etc etc).

Comparing the Nokia N900 with Android phones... apples and oranges.

(I had an n800, and ran KDE3 and OOo on it just fine - something I cannot realistically do on an Android device)

[ericb]

Anybody tested OOo4Kids ( OpenOffice.org stripped down 40% ) on Nokia ? ( see http://download.ooo4kids.org )

We could modify OOo4Kids more to adapt it better. Our need is resources : hardware or money to buy the hardware.

Maybe someone from Nokia cold help ? (e.g. loan a machine + sdk .. and so on )