On Oct 11, 2008, at 7:20 PM, Michael Adams wrote:
You are saying that the tool is purpose driven, i think?
Sorry I wasn't very clear. I wasn't sure how tools are driven so my
statement should have been more clearly a question.
And asking where OO.o places itself as a tool on your above scale.
Actually I couldn't place OO.o on my scale. My point with the map was
to show that those four products did have a set of rather specific
strengths which distinguished one from another. Certainly other tools
should probably introduce additional characteristics and a map with
additional scales for their major strengths.
But we have been
talking pretty much about Writer and to a much lesser extent, Draw
(which i refuse to see as having DTP properties at all - it aint axis
purposed that way). OO.o as a tool is larger than the purposes you
list
but not as focused.
My point is I don't see what the map for OO.o looks like. It doesn't
fit on the one I drew. I don't know where it is nor do I see where
it's going and that's partly what I am struggling with. I can learn
where it is but if the set of features to be include come from the
user community there is no telling what I might look like in a couple
years. As I wrote previously:
I don't see a vision that maps to a set of uses more a group of
applications and a features list. Is this correct?
About:
http://about.openoffice.org/index.html
From the logo at the top:
"The free and open productivity suite"
and the mission statement:
"To create, as a community, the leading international office suite
that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all
functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an
XML-based file format."
That's a good engineering statement, by my definition it isn't much of
a mission statement, at least the items enumerated are all important
mostly to engineers, but as I say that doesn't position it for me in
terms that allow me to compare and contrast any tool Take the mission
statement and try to take the writer tool and compare it with Word,
Nisus, EMACS, vi, TECO, etc. For example in terms of one element of
the mission statement '... [an] international office suite that will
run on all major platforms' if we compare EMACS and WORD, EMACS beats
WORD hands down. EMACS runs on lots more platforms than WORD and
probably always will. However, if we ask new users would they rather
use EMACS or WORD then Word would probably win by a wide margin. Is
the purpose of the mission statement to please the greatest number of
actual users or to please engineers that are willing to donate their
energy into doing neat engineering things. Engineers can sort of see
where OO.o might go from the mission statement, but I'll be dipped in
poop and rolled in cracker crumbs if I see how a user could get a
feeling for OO.o's direction. The user will probably choose a platform
and stick with it. If OO.o runs on that platform they are happy if it
doesn't they aren't going to look twice at it twice multiple platforms
isn't a show stopper or starter for users.
It is aimed as a cross platform office productivity suite. That is a
broad brush occupied by several products, none of which you listed in
your OS X short list above AFAIK. If we also throw in FOSS,
accessibilty
and must be low entry level, your two axis DTP requirements are
getting
lost in the bigger picture of feature requirements. That does not stop
you and the OP from putting in a RFE and advertising for votes on it.
Jeepers I'm a really shy person and would feel reticent about putting
anything on the wish list. <grin>
I was pretty much ignoring bitmapped fonts, they were so last century.
Vector fonts now come in multiple flavours.
I only mentioned them to illustrate how MS had chosen elements that
got them where they wanted to be which was cheap and fast whereas
Apple chose a different route in order to solve another set of
problems. Once these decisions were made then the products diverged in
significant ways under the hood but externally, to a user, the
distinctions were not really apparent. OO.o, like Apple, is addressing
problems that aren't obvious to the typical user. If OO.o is to
successfully compete with MS Office then descriptors need to be
evident that explain why, as a user, OO.o is better, different,
faster, makes you slimmer, whatever... because multi-platform doesn't
do it for most users. It doesn't tell me where it is or where it is
going or where it is.
It's not hard to create a font with a commercial tool like
Fontographer or an open source one like FontForge.
Be carefull, if a font forge sees that, you may get flamed.
Under torture I tend to scream a great deal and reveal practically
nothing. <grin>
--
St. Doug, Tigger and Puppy in our memory.
Tir na nOg
Wilton, NH USA
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