Am 02/27/2014 11:00 PM, schrieb Kay Schenk:
On 02/27/2014 10:02 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
Time to wrap this up. I've gone through the 275 questions from 430
users and picked out the top ones. I dropped the ones that repeated
questions we already answered in our last iteration of this. I also
combined questions where there were duplicates or repetitions. In
some cases I reworded questions for clarity.
Here's the "top 10", with some partial responses on a few of them.
I'll need your help to craft responses for all of them.
-----------------------------------
1) How can it be Microsoft is a platinum sponsor of Apache when
OpenOffice is competing with MS Office?
Rob: This is an odd question to ask us, but I suppose we can explain
how the ASF is a foundation that supports many (100+) open source
projects and that a sponsor of AOO does not necessarily participate or
endorse every project at Apache. But again, this is an odd question
for us. Maybe we can pass it off to Ross Gardler for a better answer?
Marcus: Or any other Apache member as I don't see us alone to provide an
answer.
-----------------------------------
2) A series of questions on proposed features and how we decide on
new features, including:
a) Is it possible to include a 'Track Change' feature in OpenOffice
like the one in MS Word?
Marcus: Looks like the user has not yet found the "Changes" function in
the Edit menu.
b) When will OpenOffice be able to support saving in (.doc) for
Microsoft Word 2012-2014?
Marcus: Depends on how the progress of the OSBA code is going. Maybe
Oliver or Juergen can tell more?
c) Does Open Office plan to add capability to print out marginal
comments/notes on the document page where they appear instead of as a
separate list at the end of the document?"
Marcus: When you define a page as Letter or DIN A4, then comments are
shown outside of this as there is still space on the monitor. However, I
don't know how to do the same when printing on paper. ;-)
d) Will OpenOffice users be able to import a "PDF" file, update it,
and export the updated file?
Marcus: First we should discuss if we want this as it would be a big
implementation effort. If so we would rise to another full-featured PDF
editor, beside Adobe.
e) How does you decide what features to put into OpenOffice?
f) What is the average time it takes you to fix a bug? add a new feature?
Rob: I thought we'd lump these all together and give an in-depth
response about how features and bug fixes are prioritized in a
volunteer-led open source project at Apache.
Marcus: IMHO it doesn't make sense to give 2 numbers. Every bug and
feature is different and its fix/implemenation depends on so many
factors that knowing just the number is senseless. It would be valid for
a specific type of bugs/features. Others can look very similar but needs
to be treated totally different in the code. It would be hard to explain
to an average user.
The PDF question seems like a much larger animal than some of the others
to me. Probably on par with b) -- on a larger scale maybe.
It may need a larger/longer explanation on its own.
Armin has provided an interesting answer in the meantime.
-----------------------------------
3) What are the long term support and development plans for OpenOffice?
Rob: This is an opportunity for us to state our practice of supporting
version N and N-1 and point to the consultants page where users can
find those who can offer longer term support.
Marcus: To refer to the consultants is a good idea. I don't think that
we would have enough ressources to do it on our own.
-----------------------------------
4) What are some of the most interesting features in OpenOffice that
most users don't know even exist?
Rob: It seems most users don't know how to use word competition ;-)
But maybe we can nominate 4 or 5 "hidden features" or "underused
features" that users might not know about?
Marcus: The AutoCorrect feature (see menu "Tools - AutoCorrect Options"
is also a hidden feature - or should I say highly misunderstood?
Furthermore, some words about the spell check and that we don't do them
on our own but rely on extension. This could maybe hel pto avoid
requests like "This and that word is wrong - please fit it".
-----------------------------------
5) What's being done to help realise the universal OpenDocument dream?
Rob: We have some material here from our Document Freedom Day blog
post, talking about project members who are also active in the OASIS
ODF TC and the standardization effort.
-----------------------------------
6) Are there backdoors or spyware in Apache OpenOffice?
Rob: Like we'd tell you if there were? ;-) But seriously, this
could be a topic of a standalone blog post, and maybe we should do
that. We could discuss open source security, how we handle
vulnerability reports and the advantage of open source transparency
for preventing back doors.
Marcus: The long-awaited NSA question. ;-)
+1 for a separate blog post.
-----------------------------------
7) How many volunteers work on OpenOffice?
Rob: We can discuss the various kinds of volunteers in different
areas and get some stats.
Marcus: Yes, what is a volunteer and how to count them. Here are many
way to Rome.
-----------------------------------
8) Does it cost anything to upload a template online?
Rob: No. Odd that this questions got so many votes. Any ideas on why
this is a question?
Marcus: No, absolutelly not. There is nothing on the Sourceforge hosted
webpages that would point into this direction. Combine the answer with
extensions as it would be the next question.
-----------------------------------
9) What is being done to have openoffice return to be the default
suite in linux distributions?
Rob: Anyone have an answer for this one?
-----------------------------------
Marcus: We have to convince the maintainer of the distrubutions to
change the default. IMHO it will be easier to get at all into the
distribution by adapting their packaging into our build system to get a
out-of-the-box compatible RPM and DEB files for Fedora/SuSE/Debian/etc. ;-)
10) How can a new volunteer contribute to the OpenOffice project?
Rob: Can point them to our "get involved" page.
My 2+x ct.
Marcus
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