Dear Members of the OpenOffice Community, Just a quick note to say a big THANKS! -- for producing such a great suite of software.
Recently I used OpenOffice 2.4 Impress (under MS Windows XP) to produce a 45-slide presentation (expanded to 172 slides for point-by-point transitions) to an important audience, for my technology invention Expressway Traffic Optimization (ETO) -- that prevents traffic congestion on freeways, by maximizing safe sustained efficient traffic performance, using pavement-embedded signal lights to guide individual drivers to use appropriate speed and spacing. There's a brief page on ETO at: www.gettorontomoving.ca/ITS-ETO.htm * * * * * * The 45-slide presentation that I produced, was my first ever, and I had very little time to prepare it, using OpenOffice which was totally new to me. Impress was so reliable and intuitive, that I quickly came to love and trust it. I'm a "retired" software engineer, with over 30 years of independent contract experience, so I have a pretty high threshold for acceptance of software products. Apart from a few little glitches in getting my slide footers to look right, and a bit of frustration sometimes with selecting small graphic elements in diagrams, I have to say Impress 2.4 really "Impressed" the heck out of me:) Also I used Writer 2.4 a bit. The (bullet point) compatibility with MS Word 2003 isn't perfect, but like Impress, the Writer product also proved to be extremely easy to learn, being so intuitive and all. * * * * * * Finally, what really made me a screaming fan of OpenOffice 2.4 Impress, was the rock-solid generation of MS PowerPoint-compatible output -- this was absolutely vital for me, as I had to use the presentation computer provided by the host organization, and their version of MS PowerPoint (2004 for the Mac). My Impress-produced PowerPoint presentation ran flawlessly on the Mac with MS PowerPoint. So THANKS GUYS! Sincerely, Steve Petrie, P.Eng. P.S. OpenOffice 2.4 is my third positive experience with open source software. I've also had a very good good experience with the gd 2.0.33 graphics programming library, and of course I also use Firefox. ITS-ETO Consortium Oakville, Ontario, Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED]
