On Wednesday 24 Dec 2008 12:22:46 am Arun Khan wrote:
now if only we had a good not a chalta hai replacement for MS Office! This is the biggest factor for people to shift in my place.
I have been using OO since way back when it was called StarOffice and I have been able to get my work done. What is the feature set at your place that your users do not find in OO - please be specific, you can also put those features in the OO wish list.
the point is that OO tries to be 'like' M$ office, or 'as good as' M$ office or 'better' than M$ office. And fails miserably. Take M$ word - this is designed to mimic the way that people wrote documents in the days of paper. They assume that: 1. You start at the beginning, go to the end and stop 2. You format the document as and when you write it.
This methodology is a result of the constraints of writing with pen and paper - any other way of doing it would result in inordinate amount of wasted effort. But what these jokers have not realised is that with the advent of the PC, those constraints no longer exist. And as even the most moronic of programmers know: good programming separates presentation from data.
A document essential consists of data - written words, images, etc and a presentation of the said data. Obviously the two have to be separated. The ideal document processor would have a module to enter data - in chunks of text without worrying about font/format etc. This implies a lightweight text entry application.
Then it would have a module to organise and present data - another lightweight application since the data would probably only be represented symbolically.
And a module to preview the result - again lightweight, since it would not be used to edit or reformat.
Since data is entered in text chunks in a database, the possibility of reuse of data is always there - DRY.
Sounds familiar no? There are hundreds of programs out there that do this. Only totally brain dead or brain washed people will ever use either M$ office or OO for anything other than maybe reading documents or converting format.
btw, this is the age of collaborative authoring - ever tried collaborative authoring with any of the above pieces of crap? I have - it's not pretty.