Chad Smith wrote:
This thread (and particularly this email) sounds very familiar. It seems we
have had this conversation many times already, and people are refining their
arguments each time.
It IS familiar. It's bothered me ever since Daniel C. made an argument
against including an Outlook style component in OOo. I remember another
argument that was against a full-fledged Access-style database component
that ran along similar lines.
<interesting blog stuff snipped>
My answer is - who cares? Why does it matter if it is a Blog or an online
newspaper? Why does it matter if an office suite is defined a certain way or
not? What we need to decide is, not what some mythological architypical
"OFFICE SUITE" should or should not contain - but what should
OpenOffice.orgcontain.
Exactly. It seems to me that these decisions should be based on more
pragmatic arguments. Particularly, What have users of office suites come
to expect? and What is do-able given the existing infrastructure and
resources?
The fact (opposed to the philosophy) is that OOo already *does* include an
HTML editor - one that sucks. It needs to be fixed. Whether that fixing
comes by rewriting the exisiting code, tweaking the existing code, or
removing the exisitng code and adding a pre-existing outside source of code,
like Nvu or something, is up for debate. But the question of whether or not
an HTML editor should be included is moot. It should because it is.
And because it's expected by the end users in a corporate environment.
There is real productivity value in having these different components
that have the same look-and-feel, the same nomenclature, similar menu
layouts, etc. UI consistency makes learning to use the different
components much easier.
Now, if you start to bring in, as Colin did, "other languages" - then you
get into what should OpenOffice.org (again, not the grand ideal OFFICE
SUITE, but the very real OOo), contain. In my personal opinion,
OpenOffice.org does not need to be a programming software suite with editors
for Perl and Ruby and Python and CGI and C++ and all this other coding
stuff.
That's what emacs is for, which, by the way, those of you who need and
like it are welcome to it. It's a terrible general word processor, but a
damn fine tool for coding.
What OOo does need to add are things like a DTP program, a bitmap editor,
and include a "OOo-skinned" version of Firefox and Thunderbird (at least as
an optional download) that is formatted (with extensions and/or plug-ins for
both OOo and Ff/Tb) to work together directly - (so like an Email this
document button that opens Thunderbird, or a preview my webpage button that
opens Firefox.)
+1
I'm not saying philosophical stuff is bad - it's just getting really old. I
honestly think this exact email, almost word for word (Rod's not mine) was
posted like a year ago, and like six months ago, and like a year and a half
ago. This endless defining of an ideal OFFICE SUITE is redundant and boring
and doesn't change anything about the very real code of OpenOffice.org.
-Chad Smith
Now, Chad, I'm on YOUR side.
But before we discuss the addition of entire components to the suite, my
vote would be for addressing some long-standing inadequacies to the
basic functioning. For example:
1. Issue 3910, posted in April of 2002. I'll skip the details but this
concerns the behavior of Writer when you wish to insert a manual page
break and have the page numbering restart at "1". The current behavior
is un-intuitive, surprising, and downright obnoxious. I thought for sure
it was a bug when I first ran across it. There's a work-around, but you
basically have to trick OOo into doing what you want.
2. Anyone ever try to make a "run-in" heading? You can do it manually,
of course, but there is no way to do it via Styles and no way to have
such a heading interact properly with the TOC maker-thingy or the
Navigator. Maybe such a beast doesn't exist in German writing?
3. Quit changing file associations for users with MSO installed! Whether
or not it SHOULD be confusing is a moot point; the fact is that it IS
confusing for a fair number of new users, and even worse, it's ALARMING
to them and makes a poor first impression. Windows users are accustomed
to having to worry about viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, and
all other sorts of nasties. Any program that does something totally
unexpected to them is immediately VERY suspicious (and destined for the
Recycle bin).
4. A full-frontal assault on the bibliography project. The current
system is good for exactly one citation/bibliography style and totally
worthless otherwise.
Just my $0.02 worth (BTW, when did the "cent" symbol disappear from
keyboards? Where did it used to be?)
Rod
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