So everyone hates Microsoft Office, but they use it anyhow.
How about something a bit more evidence based?
There are now many users who have never seen a version of Office without the
ribbon.
The availability of training and of lots of information on the Internet matters.
It is true that Microsoft has a network effect working for it. That's a
reality that is unlikely to disappear any time soon and it has to figure into
whatever AOO wants to achieve in those areas that are important for take-up,
especially in civil administration and other institutional areas apart from
"enterprise" applications.
For me, that means interoperability at the format interchange level is crucial.
UI familiarity is a factor, but UI preferences are meaningless if the
documents don't work and workers don't have the resources to have the documents
work. And by now, the ribbon is established as part of the ready-to-hand
familiarity that workers have in operating with Microsoft Office. I don't see
any meaningful way for AOO to overtake that in terms of worker mind share.
People didn't rush to the store to by Microsoft Word 6.0 because of the UI
layout either. And I don't think anyone is rushing to use even a free Word 6.0
(or Word 2000) work-alike because of the UI either.
- Dennis
-Original Message-
From: Fernando Cassia [mailto:fcas...@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2015 09:24
To: dev@openoffice.apache.org; Dennis Hamilton
Subject: Re: [OT] RE: [DISCUSS] Qt as a replacement for VCL
On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> The sales success of Microsoft Office and Office 365 suggest that
> "(almost) everyone" is inaccurate
IMHO for me this is not (and has never been) an valid argument. People "Buy
MS Office" because:
1. they have tons of documents written in Microsoft's file formats,
2. because only Microsoft Office guarantees file read/write compatibility
with MS Office documents
3. because they were trained in MS Office and 90% of the tutorials you find
on the web are about "how to do [x]" in MS Office, not LO, and not AOO
4. Because "it's the standard" and the business/organization has been
buying "MS Office" since the beginning of (IT) times...
So, basically, it's all about leverage and vendor lock-in.
I haven't met a single MS Office user who rushed to the store to buy MS
Office licenses because of the lovely Ribbon UI...
Of course, my $0.02...
FC
--
During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary
act
Durante épocas de Engaño Universal, decir la verdad se convierte en un Acto
Revolucionario
- George Orwell
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