Hello Open Office people, just thought I would drop you some feedback. Let me first say that I do not care to register and leave problem reports on the website, I should be able to send an email right from Open Office and any other way is a waste of time!
I used and recommended MS Word for a long time. I decided to try something else because Microsoft products are too expensive for me and my clients. I chose to try Open Office and have been using it frequently over the past few months. I downloaded 1.1.4 which is pretty close to the most current. I commend you developers for the work you have done. I do however have to say that you have incorporated some features that I think will end up giving me a heart attack. Take for instance trying to add two dashes, one right after the other, in a text field of the drawing program. I turned off the setting in Tools -> Autocorrect -> Options "replace dashes" and that doesn't work. Okay, well that's not exactly true. Here is an example with comments: I type some -- text on this line (okay, no conversion of '--' to dash) I type some -- text on the next line (converts '--' to a dash) and on -- this line (no conversion) It does not matter where I type the second line, it converts the '--' into a dash. It does not matter if I delete ALL the text and retype it, it converts the second line '--' into a dash. I do not want a &*$^% DASH THERE, I want '--'!!! Another bug in the drawing program is the background or "fill" color. I select a fill color, then I select a rectangle that should be filled (NOT the unfilled rectangle) and then draw the rectangle but it does not fill. So I say "ahh, I don't need the fill color, I'll just type some text in it" and when I type the text the fill color shows up behind the text while I am typing and disappears when I am done typing. Now that's a really helpful feature!! Well done people! Also, frequently when I try to use the "quicklaunch" icon to create a Text document Open Office crashes and tries to send like 10MB of information about why it crashed. That's odd, you spent all that time developing a system that reports the error when you could have spent that money and time doing some reviews to get it right so that you would not need the reporting system. Oh well, what do I know. I tell spell check to "ignore all" and the very next time that particular word shows up in the document, you guessed it, it prompts me to correct it. Even if my cursor is in the top left of the document, before the very first character in the document spell check asks me "do you want to start checking from the begining of the document?". YES YOU STUPID PIECE OF CRAP; maybe that's why I put the !@&$# cursor there? I tried to write some macro's but apparently you have to have a degree in obfuscated code to understand the documentation. Maybe you could have paid more attention to the Visual Basic Object browser feature and the elegance of the MS Macro system? WHO CARES IF IT'S SO SIMPLE IT'S DANGEROUS, AT LEAST I CAN WRITE A MACRO! At least I don't need to download an SDK to write a macro or just to get the documentation to use the obfuscanted, overly designed class library. In the Calc program I do not understand why I should have to go to Format -> Merge Cells "Define" in order to merge some cells. Like that's productive. Maybe I should take off work and spend a few weeks developing a macro to do that from the keyboard. yeah right. Also, there's no way to move the contents of a cell by dragging it; it just doesn't work. Cells ALWAYS unmerge when you cut and paste between similarly merged rows. If I want a cell to be a specific color there's only about 5 colors to choose from yet I can go create the document in MS Excel, add the EXACT color I want, then open it in Calc and there's the color. Why can't I choose the color in Calc if Calc will import the color? And the list - goes - on!!!! Great job people! You are convincing me more and more why I should purchase MS products. I might live longer because my blood pressure wont' be so high from the frustrating bugs and undocumented features of Open Office. The bugs and complexities of Open Office make me want to puke all over it and throw it out with the trash! And here's the kicker, you want me to participate in development? Please, I'd rather shoot myself in the foot. And now, after reading this, hopefully your blood pressure feels like mine does when the Open Office software dumps a core. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
