QuickOffice for iPhone Can Almost Edit [All] Office Docs

QuickOffice for iPhone Can Almost Edit Office Docs
09.11.08
By Sascha Segan

At the CTIA Fall trade show on Wednesday, I got a quick look at the
latest state of QuickOffice, one of the two Microsoft Office-
compatible suites being developed for the iPhone. It isn't quite ready
yet; right now it can edit Microsoft Excel documents, but only read
Microsoft Word documents.
The biggest challenge with creating an iPhone office suite, it seems,
is dealing with the iPhone's wacky file system issues. Each iPhone app
has its own file storage space, and the apps can't access each others'
spaces. So you can't save an e-mail attachment or something from
Safari into a public folder to be edited by QuickOffice, for instance.

QuickOffice tries to get around the problem with an extra app,
QuickAccess. QuickAccess lets you download documents from MobileMe,
Google Docs or other shared Web folders to be accessed by QuickOffice,
and then to reupload your edited documents to the Web. Because
QuickAccess shares a developer signature with QuickOffice, apparently
the three programs can all share files.

I saw a few sample spreadsheets in QuickSheet, and yes, it was quick -
you can zoom, scroll, and shrink your view using the usual iPhone
gestures. Tapping on a cell lets you edit it. QuickWord, meanwhile,
showed Word documents with formatting intact; editing is coming soon,
apparently

At 11 Sep 2008 11:25:12 -0700 4phun wrote:
> QuickOffice for iPhone Can Almost Edit Office Docs


Now if that isn't a great iPhone news headline, what is!

Tells us, Vic, what else can an iPhone almost do? ;-)


> The biggest challenge with creating an iPhone office suite, it seems,
> is dealing with the iPhone's wacky file system issues. Each iPhone app
> has its own file storage space, and the apps can't access each others'
> spaces. So you can't save an e-mail attachment or something from
> Safari into a public folder to be edited by QuickOffice, for instance.


Wow- I knew the file system was protected, but I didn't know each third-
party app could only access their own space! Now I'll sit back and let our
pal Oxford explain in detail why that was a good design decision, and why
"someday all phones will work like this!"

For all the talk of the iPhone bringing a "desktop caliber OS" to a mobile
phone, why did they saddle it with an iPod's filesystem?


> QuickOffice tries to get around the problem with an extra app,
> QuickAccess. QuickAccess lets you download documents from MobileMe,
> Google Docs or other shared Web folders to be accessed by QuickOffice,
> and then to reupload your edited documents to the Web. Because
> QuickAccess shares a developer signature with QuickOffice, apparently
> the three programs can all share files.


Might as well be a webapp if you need connectivity to access your files.

Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AnoOspamL.com> wrote in
news:gacfa0$1vv$2@aioe.org:

> For all the talk of the iPhone bringing a "desktop caliber OS" to a
> mobile phone, why did they saddle it with an iPod's filesystem?
>
>
>

As this iphone is a UNIX device, as I've had my nose rubbed in it several
times, why don't you boys just download Open Office to it? It runs on many
versions of UNIX, including OSX! We'd have to find some way of putting a
more serious input device on it that had symbols and numeric operators, but
that's not an impossible hurdle, either.

http://www.openoffice.org/

Abiword runs great on Maemo Linux:
http://abisource.com/

So doesn't gnumeric spread sheet which has monsterous capabilities!
http://www.openbossa.org/
http://etrunko.blogspot.com/2005/11/...eet-has-maemo-
support.html

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3...c_maemo_05.jpg

.......solutions from the "Dark Side".......

As to the keyboard, this one works fantastic if we can figure out how to
plug its USB port into the iphone:

http://www.activeforever.com/showpro...ProductID=2064
&SEName=duraflex-comfort-keyboard

It also makes a handy wrapper around the tablet or iPhone in a briefcase to
protect it.

With a real keyboard and Abiword, the little computers can word processes
as good as any laptop on any flat surface.