On Wed, 2005-01-26 at 01:05 -0600, Peter Kupfer wrote:
Chad Smith wrote:
Someone in this thread said that OOo has more than 500 - that's Five-Hundred
You are just making up numbers and you have no idea how many like what feature. Should we just keep the features you find useful because that must be what the majority like and remove the rest?
He is not making up numbers. I brought this number into the discussion,
and I did not invent it either. I made a rough count once, in OOo 1.1.3 IIRC. Just count them yourself if you need a more exact number. A few
(not more than 10 IIRC) of these preferences have been eliminated in
version 2.0, but the number should still be roughly the same. AFAIK
there have even been new preferences introduced.
I was referring to some statements like:
"I'd rather inconvenience 50 people by totally removing an option, than confuse 50,000 by leaving them all in."
Cursor position and title are not confusing.
I counted 52 *pages* of preferences in "Tools->Options" alone. Each of these pages has several individual preferences. And that is only "Tools->Options". There are also preferences in "Tools-> Configure" and "Tools->XML Filter Settings" amongst others. Spreadsheet prefs are twice in that screenies of 1.1.3, but I did not want to spend hours pho^H^H^Hgimping them.
I think everyone needs to take into account the fact that OOo is at a minimum 5 different programs, so we should expect 500 options. 100/app doesn't seem unreasonable. Look through Word or Excel or PowerPoint and I bet you will find more than that. Luckily for us some of the options common to multiple components are only listed once, unlike MS Office.
If I have time, I will put a page up of all the preferences in their full glory, and be it only to scare small children ;)
And: It is not about "what the majority likes" (even though
this is not the worst principle, whole nations are based on this principle, even if some of them have problems counting
the votes ;), but about making OpenOffice a better program
for its intended audience, and about getting "market share".
We will not get market share if our philosophy is to arbitrarily cut options and to remove and change options in order to be more like the other guy. If there is not substantial reason to favor us people won't.
We'll never get more people using OO if we keep aleniating certain (non-technical -- don't blame them, they are good at
other things) types of users, who are just overwhelmed by
this sheer complexity.
Agreed, but let's not alienate technical people.
This reminds of teaching. We spend so much time trying to get the special ed kids caught up so we pass state tests, that the gifted students get no attention.
Not to say that non-technical people are mentally challenged or anything like that, but hopefully my analogy is clear.
-- Peter Kupfer OOo user since 'OO4 http://peschtra.tripod.com/open_office/ooo_front.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
