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------- Additional comments from [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu Feb 9 10:11:42 -0800 2006 ------- It seems that measurement units are a truly frustrating issue for many. In fact, the original comment for this post uses a measurement unit which to me seems unhelpful. The number of countries where OOo is used should not be as important as the number of actual users, but I digress. I personally prefer inches, but unfortunately in contrast to the original comment most of the defaults seem to be metric in origin. 0.79 inches for a margin is unwieldy at best when trying to format a page using inches. With the current behavior of 2.0.1 (as far as I can tell from testing things) in order to change the unit of measurement in Writer to metric it only needs to be changed in two places, the general measurement unit and the ruler measurement units. In order to effectively use inches, though, each measurement needs to be changed or symmetry and layout on a page become much more difficult. I'm not trying to argue that one unit of measurement is better than another. I'm simply trying to point out that as things currently stand, everyone has something that they could complain about with respect to measurements. The easiest solution for the end user is to have some kind of system integration. Most people have already set their system up the way they want. Having OOo detect those settings at the time of installation and even possibly being aware of changes to those settings would solve a lot of headaches, and it would end most of this debate. It wouldn't solve everything though. Having the general measurement unit set to the same unit as the rest of my system after install would be nice, but if I still have to adjust every measurment setting so that I'm not working with odd fractions, the issue will only partly be resolved. I know that I can change the settings, and I can even save new templates and set them as the default. New users don't usually know that much though. I suggest that if OOo is given the ability to detect system settings to solve global inconsistencies in usage, it should also have separate templates and measurements to be used as defaults depending on the unit of measurement. Another option would be to create a setup wizard for locale-specific settings. It would be best if it could be run at any time, and if it were implemented, I would suggest that there be a button added to the very end of the first-run dialogue that would let people start it then (skipping it would be an option). The wizard could even tie into templates and other defaults. Creating a wizard might be a simpler approach than system integration, and having things separate from the system might be seen as an advantage. I would say that my biggest challenge in getting novice users to feel comfortable on OOo is helping them to understand how OOo handles measurements and teaching them how to change measurement units and settings. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated notification from Issue Tracker. Please log onto the website and enter your comments. http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html#notification --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
