On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:11:32 -0400
Came this utterance fomulated by Twayne to my mailbox:

> > On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:04:08 +0100
> > Came this utterance fomulated by Mark Potter to my mailbox:
> >
> >> Michael
> >>  How is MS Word a better application for this purpose? it seems
> >>  better in that you can create your own unique style
> >
> > OpenOffice.org has more control of styles than MSWord. You can set
> > styles on individual pages, lists, tables, TOC's etc, even having
> > portrait and landscape page styles in the same document.
> 
> Just for the sake of accuracy and meaning nothing at all against OOo
> or the author, you can do all of those things in Word too.  So it
> doesn't actually have "more" control in the sense of your listing.
> Word is even slightly more intuitive in a couple of those and less in
> others.
> 

Word does not have page styles.

> >
> >> and have criteria you decide in the resume.
> >
> > Any template can be modified, and you are welcome to submit
> > modifications or alternatives to the documentation project.
> >
> >> it would be helpful if the application in linux is broadened
> >> somewhat similar to that in MS.
> >
> > I disagree, that is the trap that many making suggestions fall into.
> > Making it more like MSWord means that it can never be better than
> > MSWord. It will always be playing catch-up to try to look like the
> > latest improvement to the competitor. Are we trying to make a better
> > app or an also-ran?
> 
> True, but IMO, what the development team is up against is, the public 
> wants Word capabilities first, and better second.  What they want is
> to get out from under MS's planned obsolescence and expensive upgrades
> every time you turn around or else stick in the same rut year after 
> year.  "also-ran" is also past tense, which so far comes nowhere near 
> the track for Ooo. 

I use "also-ran" in the horse racing sense, there are the leaders first
through third and the also-rans. You are either a leader or an also-ran.

> So more accurately, they first want Word and 
> improvements over Word would be the icing on the cake to bring more
> and more Word professionals into the fold.  So in a way the OOo team
> has a tougher project description than do the MS folks.  And they have
> achieved some pretty good improvements.
> 

With the change in UI in Office 2007 - OO.o has the opportunity to
fork it's UI from that of Office. By first sticking to the well known
UI, and gaining a following of those who don't want to have to learn the
new Office UI. Then by developing appropriate UI improvements into the
program over time. This is possible more with OO.o because the release
cycles are more frequent. Offices change was a drastic one which can
alienate a lot of it's existing users. 

> >
> >> it would be far better than MS as linux is! thanks for the site,
> >I'll> have a look around.
> >>
> >
> > Many power users (i am not a power user) already think it is better.
> 
> I'm sure that's true in some cases, but this user still has to keep
> Word around, much as he doesn't like to.  OOo still has some
> weaknesses that won't allow the complete separation from Word yet that
> a lot of people run into.  The biggie for me is image stability in and
> out of table structures for large documents, including during PDF
> creation.  There are ways to work around them and i've used a lot of
> them, but for some few I still have to return to Word to get it done
> in any reasonable timeframe.  Another real annoyance is that Writer
> just can't do envelopes accurately and for me, with a center-feed
> laser printer, it's a pain to get a template for an envelope I haven't
> yet created a custom template for, to print right.  Where with Word
> it's just a couple of keyclicks.
> 

One of the biggest issues for me is the way Word collapses top spacing
above the top paragraph into the margin of the page, the bottom
paragraph and margin as well. I blame Microsoft for this because i am
aware as a web developer that they do it with Internet Explorer as well
against W3C specs. This is one of the reasons they have to keep
supporting broken websites. - I'm just highlighting that the differences
are differences not necesarily failings on OO.o's part.

> Nothing I'm saying is meant to minimize OOo in any way.  It's a 
> fantastic accomplishment to date and is continuing to progress, but it
> gets harder and harder every day.  These sort of programs are almost 
> living programs as documents are living documents.  And when you add 
> Calc, Base et al to the mix, you realize just how huge an
> accomplishment Ooo really is. And f course, it couldn't have happened
> without SUN.
> 
> Twayne
> 

Cheers, you have good points of discussion.

-- 
Michael

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall
be well

 - Julian of Norwich 1342 - 1416

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