[plug] Oxymoron: Microsoft, innovation

[William Kenworthy]

Ive just been bitten! OO has the functionality but compatibility leaves
something to be desired - disastrously so in some cases.  I am finding I
have to boot a qemu image of windows so I can run office to print word
documents in a form thats readable. Inserted images and tables
missing/missaligned/running off the page ...

I would love to be able to 'demand' that everything gets sent to me in
pdf or odt!

BillK




On Thu, 2006-06-15 at 16:27 +0800, Mark J Gaynor wrote:
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
> 
> On 15/06/2006 at 10:47 AM Jason Posavec wrote:
> 
> >Are all the Pluggers in positions of influence encouraging their 
> >companies to use ODF  where possible? And when told that Microsoft 
> >Office doesn't support this format, are they then explaining that OOo 
> >has all the functionality of MO, but without the productivity-robbing 
> >bells and whistles?
> 
> You have to make the distinction between functionality and compatibility.
> It may be functionally the same but compatibility, no. (Star Office is
> supposed to be more compatible. I can't comment on that as I have not
> used Star Office since Sun came into the picture.) To me, these need
> to share top billing. Hind sight is a wonderful thing. I wander if Bill
> Gates
> had his time over again, knowing what he does now, would he have done
> things differently?
> 
> I support your line of thought, however, if you want OOo to be taken up
> by the 'enterprise set' it has to first emulate the product it is replacing
> exactly, not nearly but exactly. That is out of the box too. It does not
> matter that OOo has a superior file type or what ever, the reality is
> people look at it from where they are now.
> 
> If you open a MS document, OOo should by default ask if you wish to
> keep your original format and if by chance the user does not understand
> what a file format is, OOo should save the document back to the original
> format anyway. Instead of making things harder we need to acknowledge
> that the majority of workers in an office have little more than the basic
> knowledge to get the job done. The instruction book on the software is
> locked away in the IT office for the guru read
> 
> I have lost count of the times people have just asked to show how to
> do a particular task and write down the steps verbatim. They are not
> always interested in what funky things might be done, they have a
> job to do with a deadline and that is what drives the learning curve.
> 
> I wanted to import some CSV text data into a spreadsheet with OOo,
> a simple task you may think. Well,I could not find anything that would 
> allow me to do this simple task. I could import XML and some others
> but not CSV. Deadline was looming so the only choice was to dump
> OOo and finish the job with the MS Office suite. Would that not say
> to you that OOo cannot do a simple thing like import CSV data like
> Microsoft can!
> 
> Another example of open source missing the point or re inventing the
> wheel is Gimp. Highly rated by those who use it, but come from
> only using Adobe Photoshop in all its glory, because the company
> can afford the real deal and all the plugins. The transition to Gimp
> is far from easy, as they put everything in different places to where
> you expect them, if you can find them at all. Instead of the work
> flowing smoothy, you have to stop and hunt for that elusive tool or
> setting that is so obvious in the other application.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, the same con be said for Gimp users
> transitioning to Photoshop, but remember there are more people
> that understand and/or use Photoshop than Gimp, Photoshop is
> the industry standard, as is Microsoft Office.
> 
> The point that I'm trying to make is if there is an accepted model
> the world sees things in, to get people to accept the new better
> program to work with, the new model must follow closely to what
> is generally accepted as being the norm or standard.
> 
> Where MS has it over anything that follows is it usability
> research with users. If you don't get the idiot factor right, the
> product take up will be very slow, if at all. They spend millions
> on the R&D that the Open Source community can only wish
> for. That being said, those Open Source apps that are making 
> inroads have got the use ability/idiot factor right, so it is not an
> impossibility.
> 
> I support Open Source where ever, when ever I can, and it 
> is my first choice, the reality is use ability that produces
> productivity. The  model that needs to be adopted is the
> one most are already comfortable with, like it or not.
> 
> 
> 
> My 2 cents worth.
> 
> Mark
> --
> 
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-- 
William Kenworthy <billk at iinet.net.au>
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