2011/8/11 e-letter <[email protected]> > Readers, > A recent feature request prompted the strategic question: what is more > important, minimising bugs or adding new features? > Of course, the ideal answer is to do both (;)), but remember, the > question is to choose only one answer... > >
Maybe the dilemma can be solved differently for different features / bugs... To shed some light on the feature request that I submitted recently: 1. X error bars for XY scatter plots =========== I feel this feature is really important and possibly not that difficult to implement by adapting the code that already exists for Y-error bars (but I am not a code developper!) . In my university environment with students and scientists, LO is not used at the moment (LO is even not known by most of the 30 collaborators around me!), but thing can change just with this X-error bar feature! With respect to scientific graphs, the lack of X-error bars feature restricts the potential use of LO to only (let's say) 80% of the graphs to be drawn. This means that people need to use another software for 20% of the graphs. If they need to learn a specific graph software, they use it for 100% of their graphs... and LO is not used at all (this is the present situation in my professional environment). Just adding the X error bars feature would allow to raise the potential use of LO to at least 95% of the graphs, and LO can be used to turn around most of the remaining 5% cases. As people like to remain in the same environment, if they would be able to draw more than 95% of their graphs in CALC, they would also treat their data directly in Calc spreadsheets, and then they would also discover that Writer and Impress are available in the same suite... (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and a graph software cover more than 99% of what we use (e-mail and internet excluded), so LO can really meet our needs; some features in CALC are already better than in Excel). With the X error bar feature included in Calc, I would have strong arguments to suggest the use of LO for our scientific activities; students and collaborators would not raise arguments to argue against it, just because treating their data, drawing graphs, presenting them and writing reports would be simpler than what they are doing at present: with LO, no need to master several softwares or to manage import/export processes between unrelated softwares So, I consider this feature is really important! 2. Broken axis option =========== There are ways to turn around the use of broken axes. This feature has probably less priority than solving some bugs. 3. Y-error bar for Net chart =========== This feature has probably less priority than solving some bugs. Hope this can help in the debate! Patrick -- Unsubscribe instructions: 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.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
