Dear Sir I have two ideas that would enable OpenOffice to do more than MSOffice in two important areas - both in the WordProcessor.
Articles about Office software always compare against MSOffice. The impression is that MSOffice can do everything. But MSOffice can't and businesses need features that MSOffice simply hasn't bothered to think of. The first of these two ideas is more useful than just businesses because everyone needs it. Since neither feature is done in MSOffice there should be NO conversion to MSOffice but there should be an export to pdf of the document. MINUTES OF MEETINGS Write a new, separate MINUTE_MAKER software. Most minutes of meetings involves the creation of three columns. The first column is item number, the middle column is the minute and the final column is the action (the name of initials of the person taking responsibility for the action). The present difficulty is that the initials/name in the action column needs to line up with a line in the middle column that is not necessarily top, middle or bottom of the row/cell - And when you edit the middle cell - the initials/name in the action column needs to move with the item. Hence Minutes of meetings in MSWord are a pain. In MINUTE_MAKER within OpenOffice you could anchor an action name/initials in the third column with a word in the middle column and similarly, anchor an item number in the first column with the beginning of a sentence in the middle column. SPECIFICATIONS In business, when writing specifications, track edits is great for what it does but when we used to type specifications out a triangular marker was put in the left hand column to show where a line had been editted. The purpose of the mark is to show other readers which part of the specification has been altered. Circles with numbers in them already exist and so we could consider a circle instead of a triangle. Whether it is a circle, triangle or other shape isn't important. Specifications option in OpenOffice would allow a hidden left hand column (or extreme right hand column) in which a circle with the edit number would be placed against the line that has been changed. If revision 3 changed a line that had an earlier revision marker against it then it would simply overwrite the earlier revision marker. Where several lines have been altered then a line would go from the first line to the end line in which the change has occurred. For example, if a block of 6 lines were changed at revision 2 then a circle with the number 2 in it appears against the 1st changed line and the 6th changed line and a line (or group of dots) joins the two together. Regards Clive de Salis --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
