I have a Gnumeric spreadsheet with a graph in it. I get a new computer, which happens to be running a more recent version of Gnumeric, and copy my home directory to it. I open up my spreadsheet.
The graph's gone! Hateful! It still has a title, axes, and so on, but there's a big white space where my data used to be. Double-clicking the graph and looking at the options I can't even see where one could specify what the data should be. Odd. Eventually I give up, thinking I'll create a new spreadsheet and insert a chart on that, then perhaps copy the data over. 'Insert' > 'Chart...' brings up a dialogue box entitled 'Select Chart Type'. There's a list at the left headed 'Plot type'. The list is empty. Hateful! So, somehow this version of Gnumeric doesn't have any graph types defined -- yet it still displays the useless dialogue box, pretending I can pick one. Hateful! Perhaps graphs type definitions are now separate. Hmmm, Ubuntu has a gnumeric-plugins-extra extra package; let's try that. Nope, no difference. I can't be the only one suffering this. Let's try Googling. Ah, graphs are indeed plug-ins, and 'Tools' > 'Plug-ins...' is the place to go to configure them. But that's greyed out. Hateful! I click on an empty cell, and the menu item is now available. But, really, why on earth does having a chart selected mean I can't manage plug-ins? I see there's a bunch of charting plug-ins, so I activate them. I can see the logic in moving this functionality into plug-ins, but why weren't plug-ins for former-core features activated by default? Hateful! Oh, it turns out that actually for new users such plug-ins _are_ activated by default. It's just that I copied my home directory -- including my Gnumeric config, it seems -- from an older version. And part of that config was my list of active plug-ins! THEY MOVED CORE FUNCTIONALITY INTO A PLUG-IN AND THEN DECIDE WHETHER TO ENABLE THAT PLUG-IN ON THE BASIS OF WHETHER I'VE PREVIOUSLY ENABLED THAT PLUG-IN THAT THEY'VE JUST MADE UP! Hateful doesn't cover it. When I opened the document with a graph surely Gnumeric could notice it needs a plug-in? Or the interfacing for enabling graph-releated plug-ins could be in the dialogue boxes for selecting the types of new or existing graphs? Or at least those dialogue boxes could mention where to go to enable plug-ins? Or at least they could do that if currently no chart plug-ins are enabled? Because if graphs require plug-ins to be enabled, what bigger clue that the user wants to use them could there possibly be than choosing the 'insert graph' feature? Do they actually expect there is _anybody at all_ who when presented with an empty list of chart types wants to do anything other than enable a chart plug-in or two? Really? But that isn't the end of it. Because enabling the plug-in doesn't actually make the chart appear, oh no. For that I have to re-open the document. Hateful! Smylers
