Hi :)
To be fair 

1.  Many people here are not native English speakers.  On the plus side that 
means you often get answers at any hour of the day or night.  Many other 
on-line places rely on US timetables.  

2.  It's a very unusual request.  


Also because this place is almost entirely volunteers we are not seeking to 
close tickets asap.  So, our initial answers are rarely expected to completely 
solve the issue but do often seek out further information or aim to explore the 
parameters of the problem.  We DON'T consider a matter closed after our first 
guess.  Indeed sometimes even after the original poster has let us know the 
problem has been fixed we sometimes go on discussing side-issues, other ways 
around, what to watch out for next, new techniques and so on.  Sometimes that 
leads us to solve half a dozen differnt people's problems in one thread, teach 
a bunch of people new skills (or learn them) AND solve problems before the op 
runs into them.    


I have been to quite a lot of PowerPoint presentations and seen many more and 
Impress ones and i have been on this list for nearly 3 years.  Usually we get 
very similar questions or ones that get fixed with similar approaches.  This is 
the first time i've ever heard of anyone wanting a "Count down" timer on their 
slides!  


Now that the question has been asked i find it unbelievable that no-one has 
thought of it before!  It might even have kept me awake during some 
presentations or made me aware that i didn't have time to write it all down 
(which i only tend to do to try to keep awake).  If there could be different 
options such as a progress-bar (like when loading heavy web-pages or installing 
programs) or a "launch count down" in the last 5-10 seconds or something.  



There was a throw-away remark about "may as well ask for the moon" "unless we 
"learn to do our own coding" as though learning to do the coding is an 
impossibility.  However this project DOES allow people to learn how to, even 
encourages it.  


You don't have to be a brilliantly gifted student studying programming at 
college.  In fact that might even get in the way because apparently formal 
courses don't teach anything about security!  (according to a recent magazine 
report so don't rely on it!)  The LibreOffice way is to learn at your own pace, 
preferably by getting a mentor from the devs mailing list to help guide you and 
with the whole of the devs irc channel.  Some of the devs do get paid and are 
currently working in different companies such as SUSE, Redhat, Google, maybe 
Canonical (and others) and get seconded to TDF to work on LibreOffice as part 
of their paid work.  Generally people are encouraged to work on some of the 
"Easy Hacks"
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Easy_Hacks
at first so that they gain experience, confidence and learn in-house styles 
that may vary between projects normally.  


Just yesterday someone wrote to this list asking for help with his coding work 
as he had independently found a bug, written a coding patch and applied it 
without any help from anyone in the wider community here!  His patch is now 
getting looked at by our devs on their mailing list and may reach QA and may 
get into a future official release of LibreOffice!  Even though i know nothing 
about coding, applying patches or compiling he seemed to appreciate the link i 
was able to give him to help him "compile" his patch.  But as i said you don't 
have to be brilliant like that to get involved with coding.  I imagine a lot of 
it is quite routine and just a case of following orders/instructions/guidance.  


Regards from 

Tom :)  





>________________________________
> From: Miss Keating <misskeat...@comcast.net>
>To: b...@fdi.us 
>Cc: lagin...@gmail.com; users@global.libreoffice.org 
>Sent: Saturday, 4 May 2013, 1:41
>Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Impress query
> 
>
>To Brewster Gillett:
>
>I can't help with your search for knowledge, but feel impelled to 
>comment on the stunning inability of the gang to comprehend your crystal 
>clear, 
>simple, and obvious description of that which you wish to accomplish.
>
>If your quest advances to the status of "enhancement request", a useful 
>extension would be the ability to set each countdown clock separately, so that 
>different slides could be on display for differing time periods.
>
>You specified a digital counter; I would like the option for an analog 
>clock.  
>
>Since we're not likely to get any of this until we learn how to do our 
>own coding, we may as well ask for the moon.
>
>MK
>
>
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