[plug] Openoffice chart production

[Derek Fountain]

On Saturday 11 October 2003 15:21, Brad Campbell wrote:
> In the end, I copied the file to a windows box and did it on there. 2
> Minutes later I had what I was after.

I feel your pain. I was wondering if it was just me, but it seems not. Every 
time I try to do what should be a simple task in OOo I end up getting 
frustrated by its apparent inability to do what I want. It's happened to me 
at least half a dozen times. I forget the examples, except the last one: I 
was trying to add images - screenshots - into a document, and could I get the 
captions to say what I wanted, where I wanted them? Well, yes, of course I 
could, but only by saving the document as a Word file, loading it into Word, 
deleting all the crap OOo had put in (which OOo apparently couldn't delete 
itself), then doing it with Word. Over an hour lost trying to get OOo to do 
the job, then seeing Word do it in 2 minutes.

It wouldn't be so bad if I claimed to know anything about MS Office. I don't. 
It's just that the applications seem to know what I want, and in most cases, 
leads me straight to the way to do it. I think it's called usability.

So much effort seems to have been put into making OOo read Office files they 
appear to have forgotten to make it easy to use. At least their compatibility 
efforts have made it easy to get your documents into a state where you can 
finish the job in Office.

I've formally given up with OOo. I'll try again in a year or two when they've 
had a chance to react to feedback and make it usable. In the meantime MS 
Office remains the productivity suite of choice, even for a Linux zealot like 
me.

-- 
> eatapple
core dump

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