L.S. As a Linux user, I have been working with Open Office for some time now. Lately, I have been thinking about a new function in Open Office to persuade as much MS Office users as possible to migrate to OO.
I have described this function below; I am curious what the OO project members think about it. If you have any questions or remarks, feel free to respond. Keep up the good work! Best regards, Henk-Jan van der Molen ============================== In the old DOS days, many users were fond of the submerge screen Wordperfect provided, because it gave the user an insight and control over the layout of the document that was without parallel. With Windows and KDE/Gnome every wordprocessor is wysiwyg, but some users still long for the control the submerge screen offers. Those who have experienced unpredicable changes in the style of a document when deleting a last empty paragraph in MS Word, know what I mean. Wordperfect still has the submerge screen, but the problem now is that the world has selected MS Office as a standard. Most users are unwilling to pay for an alternative, however user friendly it is. Its even hard to persuade people to start using a good freeware wordprocessor like Open Office, because some users don't trust that Open Office can handle ALL their MS Office documents. Its all about trust. To my opinion, that situation could change if a next version of Open Office would provide a submerge screen. As I see it, there are 2 benefits: 1. I believe that this could persuade many users to try Open Office, because they feel more in control using it. They will trust OO more to process their precious MS Office documents, because all changes can be undone easily. 2. Also I think that good publicity can be made when the next version of Open Office would have a submerge screen. Many Wordperfect users would instantly know the benefits of this function. They would want to see for themselves if the user experience is similar to Wordperfect. I think that even the announcement that OO 3 would have a submerge screen, will cause a thrill. It is a strategic choice to reveil news like this up front, of course. But other software companies display similar behaviour. I know that developing this function will take a lot of effort, but it would be worth it. Wordprocessor software is very important, because lost of people use this software knowingly every working day. This group includes managers who can make the choice for migrating their company to OO. I think that if the amount of OO users could double, then this can tip the scale. More people will see the benefits of using open source Office software, e.g. for archiving documents. In short, I believe that adding the submerge screen function to the next version of OO, will speed up this process. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
