"To make complex office tasks easy to everyone" - concise, short and to the point. Love that Daniel!
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:52 AM, Daniel Hulse <[email protected]> wrote: > One thing I can think of that would be important to defining this purpose > is > audience. Who is LibreOffice for? Sure, anyone can use if if they want, but > who are we targeting? LibreOffice is used by students, businesses, and > governments, but that's not really helpful in terms of design. One insight > that might be helpful is the fact that many of the people who use office > software aren't very good at using and understanding computers--they know > how to check their email, use a web browser, and do some things in their > office software, but that's it--they aren't very good at changing settings > or preferences, learning how to use new programs, or installing software. > These people have to be taken into account, because if something is > understandable to them, then it should be understandable to everyone--they > are the lowest common denominator. > At the same time, people should be able to use LibreoOffice for real > work--we shouldn't be getting rid of advanced functionality in terms of > what > can be done with the programs, because often LibreOffice is the easiest > tool > that can be used for that task (for example, it is much easier to make an > ANOVA table in Calc than it is to learn R to make one) > > I suppose, taking this into account, the purpose of LibreOffice would be, > broadly, "To make complex tasks easy for everyone." At the same time, > LibreOffice isn't and probably shouldn't be in the business of making web > browsers, file managers, or 3d modeling tools. So what kind of tasks is > LibreOffice meant to perform? Creating and editing documents is one > (Writer, > Impress, Math, Draw), and organizing and analyzing data is another (Calc, > Base)--fairly general tasks that need to be done in a variety of settings > and workplaces. Documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and the like are > used everywhere for a variety of purposes, so we can't get too specific > with > the purpose, either. > > I suppose that would make the purpose of LibreOffice something like: "To > make work easy for everyone, by providing an easy-to-use set of tools for > making documents and presentations and for organizing and editing data." > > Then again, thinking this is making me question why we bundle up each of > the > modules and call it LibreOffice. Sure, it's good to have tools that work > well together, but doing so in our case seems to rob the project of a clear > focus. Then again, this is how people expect to get their office software, > and it would be impractical for LibreOffice to not be this way, since this > project is seen as a drop-in replacement to Microsoft Office. > > -Daniel > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Finding-a-Purpose-tp4114430p4116775.html > Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted > > -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
