JTD wrote:- (Parts without quotes)

OO is not ready for use IS an attitude problem. Especially when it is contrary to my (and hughe number of other people's) experience in using both Msorifice and OO

(RB) If that was the case it would sell like hot cakes. Retail vendors are always looking out for equivalent solutions. If you had bad experiences with M$ that's fine because it helps promote linux faster. But my experience with M$ users is different. They are already used to the software and after I take over the systems, their problems get eliminated steadily and they use the systems with minimum or no hanging and crashes. Everything starts running smoothly and efficiently except for hardware issues or reckless users. In the end it becomes difficult to make them change to another environment when everything works fine. Added to that are the functionality problems like the one I described. The user has been using Excel since more than 10 years and has good knowledge of its working. he went through the help docs, spent almost a day trying to get it right, but ultimately decided to stick to M$. This doesn't make me happy in any way.

M$ softwares may have more bugs, be less stable than nix based ones but when they are in the stable working mode, at least they do the job they are intended to do.

Utter nonsense unless u include Msoriffice and Xpee crashing 10 times a day and using antivirus as great features and part of HM BG's grand architecture.

(RB) This is rubbish. If M$ Office and XP crash 10 times a day, most offices will shut down. There will be chaos. Lets not get biased so much that we exaggerate.

If it's a bug say it's a bug and file a report, rather than make comments that are opposite to our daily experience. I have often asked about some problem or the other about various packages and ALWAYS it's the developer (amongst others) who have responded, usually within a few hrs. and Never later than 24 hrs. So what are u yakking about?

(RB) If your experience is different, good for you. My yakking highlights problems so that other people should not face them. Your extreme and biased yakking steers people away from linux.

This is in response to Krish's reply to JTD's mail and I quote...

"actually the entire problem is that people don't realise the values of running a script. and by the way running a script is "nothing to do " with programming. I think clicking on next next finish etc is not a real good way of software setup."

Simplifying a procedure means that one can do more work instead of wasting time running scripts. How would we feel if we got a mobile phone where instead of pressing buttons, we had to create and run scripts every time we wanted to dial a number

U are thouroughly confused between setting up and using. If u are setting up the phone, that is precisely what you sorely miss. If i were selling 50 phones to a courier company, imagine what a pain in the ass it would be to click innumerable buttons to setup the phone book which would be 90% common to all.

(RB) GUI is just an extension of a script. The script you mentioned can be run by simply clicking a gui shortcut to it. It is all about environment. If you have to work in a terminal only environment, naturally command line and scripts is the way. If you are in a gui environment, and if the gui is created well, it would do the same functions as script.What is important is to understand the concept of the job in hand, not expertise in a particular interface. For example in the ADSL and wireless routers there is a tiny linux system running and it can be configured using scripts. However if that was the only way, how many service engineers would be able to use the command line interface? Instead, there is a gui firmware interface which only the service personnel would understand and they correctly enter the values according to the customer's environment and the gui internally creates relevant scripts and runs them. That is technology. You can't fight it simply because it makes things easy for others. There are people who are at ease with a screen full of text but there are others who feel intimidated by it and require some graphical interface to interact. This means we are being more inclusive, catering to different needs of different service persons.

or access the phone directory or any other function. The same process is happening in the background but the programmers have provided a beautiful interface to simply press a button.

For the unbelievably simple task of clicking a button there is a script (software) running. When u customise (like the courier company case) u script. when you annotate a schematic, the annotation is different for every schematic, but the process is exactly the same, so you script. When u perform repetititive tasks in a spread sheet you macro (which is a script). And once u create a script u can reuse it forever. Without sitting in front of a machine clicking "Beautiful Buttons".

(RB) Read above reply.

If scripting is so important, why don't we start doing all our home and office work in assembly language or machine code?

You are.

This will give us better control of the hardware. It is up to the programmer to make software intuitive and easy to handle. It has no relation with scripting skills of the vendor or user. Let each one do his job properly.

You could not be more wrong. While there is nothing wrong in controlling pcs with thought or hand waves or clicks, doing so repetitively is a pain.

If you feel differently good for you. Just dont pretend that your subjective preferences are god's ordained rules and hence some piece of code is not ready for this or that. As you can see my subjective preferences are most definetly holier than yours.

(RB) Just because you feel that your way is the only right way to do things it does not make it so. There are other good ways too.