In a message dated 2010.09.01 03:50 -0500, jonathon wrote:
[OOo /does/ have a reputation as] "... not very user friendly."
Being user-friendly is a myth.
Something that I can get anybody to demonstrate, using the program that
they think is the most user friendly they have ever come across, within
sixty seconds.
(a) Regarding tools within applications: /Any/ tool that allows the user
to troubleshoot a problem more easily is, ipso facto, "user-friendly".
(b) Regarding programs more generally: /Of course/ some programs (and
other products), and ways of doing things are more "user-friendly" than
others. Criteria include things like number of steps to produce an
outcome, the conceptual model on which the product is designed, and
relative clarity or obscurity of unintended results [see (a)]. If that
were not so, why would designers and product teams - including OO's -
spend so much time and energy on "usability" studies?
There's a reason why a product as good as OOo - being *given away*,
available on every practical platform - still does not have a
commanding market presence.
It's probably not a good use of list bandwidth to go through, point by
point, issues which boil down to a combination of inertia and MS
predatory marketing. Neither of those elements is new, and both can be
overcome [cf. Firefox] by some combination of functional and price
advantages and open file formats. OO has at least two out of those
three; I hope we are all determined to make that three out of three.
... Writer's styles functionality is less than clearly thought out.
The way OOo implemented styles is a bit different from how both Wp
and MSO implemented styles.
Different, yes (though the implementation is reasonably close to
MSO/Word's), but you can hardly look at all the Writer styles questions
that go unresolved on this list and put the issue down to just
"different". There are places, both basic and detailed, where Writer
styles need to be thought through more clearly. But darn it, this is
exactly why I said I hated to mention it in this thread - because the
topic is too big and OT to be resolved here - but had to mention it to
counter the implication that people who have trouble with OO are some
combination of lazy and/or stupid.
FWIW, that was once the position of WP: supporting every platform
(more than OO supports today),
Which version of WP was available for six different operating systems?
WP4 or WP5 on: Amiga, Atari, AOS, DOS, VMS, System/370, Unix [I ran WP
5.1 on SCO Desktop], Apple II and MacOS (MacOS versions were numbered
differently), OS/2, Windows. Linux and Java came later. From WP6
onward, the platform focus narrowed, eventually to Windows only - again,
a huge (and partly open-source) story behind this, but way too OT to
relate here.
John
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