Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
I haven't read all of this discussion in line-by-line detail, so forgive me if I'm unduly repetitive. In my experience (government lawyer), larger organizations tend to prefer MSO over the free LO for several reasons. 1. Job Security. The old saying for IT Managers used to be, Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Likewise, IT professionals will always feel safe in buying MSO. At least here in America, I think most IT managers would consider it a risky deal to move everyone in the organization to LO. 2. Compatibility. Back in the DOS days, I was the only lawyer in our office using PC-Write (still my all time favorite word processor). It didn't matter then, because we didn't have networks or share digital files. Now, everything gets shared back and forth over and over. I've tried doing with different programs (MSO to OOo, MSO to WP, WP to MSO), etc. At the end of the day, all the attempts at file conversion never worked good enough. Something always got lost in the translation and, over time, the files got irreparably corrupted. I ended up keeping many programs on my computer so I could always use whatever my counterpart was using. Sorry to say it, but MS has the advantage of inertia. People buy it because people buy it, and as long as people keep buying it, people will buy it. Large corporations or government offices don't care about software licensing costs. It's just the cost of doing business. This is different for home users. I have *never* paid money for an office suite on my home computers. I've used everything from MS Works, PerfectWorks, (both of which came bundled with my computers) along with StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, and LO. As to features, both MSO and LO have far more features than any single person will ever need. Number of features isn't the issue. The issue is whether a program has the features *I* need to get today's task completed. Since software is published for a wide range of different users, programs tend to grow in an attempt to meet as many different needs as possible. For me, LO's niche is in providing a cost effective office suite for home users or smaller businesses where cost is, indeed, an issue. But, I agree with Ken that being free isn't enough for LO to overtake MSO. Virgil -Original Message- From: Ken Springer Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2013 10:15 PM To: users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project On 11/3/13 6:49 PM, jonathon wrote: On 11/03/2013 04:32 PM, Ken Springer wrote: Using a feature by feature comparison, there is no way LO or Kingsoft is serious competition for Office Pro. A point you are missing, is that even in a corporate environment, all of the parts offered by MSO Pro are not needed by all of the employees who use the office suite. But in total, all parts offered by MSO Pro may be used by someone in the company. Regardless, that's irrelevant to the discussion. That discussion is which MSO offering is LO nearest to. If it was cheaper for the company to buy three quarters of the staff MSO home edition, and a quarter MSO business edition, and a quarter MSO Pro, they would do that. But they can't. So it's moot. Microsoft's cheapest business license is for MSO Pro. Assuming it is still offered, the most expensive license is for MSO Enterprise edition. MSO Enterprise may be available, but it's not on the website. Didn't spend a lot of time searching, but found no Enterprise 2013. If you want to compare office suite with office suite, MSO Enterprise Edition is the only thing on the market, that offers all of the programs, from the same software maker. All of the other, similar solutions, use packages form several different software vendors. I'm missing something here, would you expand on this? ( I don't know if Microsoft still offers MSO Enterprise Edition. Back when the business I was working at looked at it, it was not listed on the Microsoft Product Page alongside the other MSO offerings.) If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot better. To be serious competition, you just have to be roughly as good. Those are standards I do not accept. You should aspire to be the best you can be, not just good enough. Yugos were good enough. Good enough is the mortal enemy of superior. Not in the long run, if you want to be, for lack of a better phrase, in first place. Sooner or later, someone kicks your butt off the pedestal. Au contraire, my friend, as I just pointed out with the charts above, LO is competition to the mid-level version of Office only. For 80% of the MSO user base, MSO Pro is overkill, which is why LO is a more appropriate option that MSO Pro. That depends on the users needs. While I agree with your many will buy Pro when it's not needed, that's also irrelevant to the discussion. Ford doesn't just
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hello Ken, Le Sat, 02 Nov 2013 09:07:57 -0600, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com a écrit : On 11/2/13 3:48 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Le Fri, 1 Nov 2013 22:59:33 +, e-letter inp...@gmail.com a écrit : On 01/11/2013, Charles-H. Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org wrote: But when we come to think of it, these people started somewhere, one day, to contribute, and while they all have their own reasons, we (the people in charge of marketing) thought that everybody has the ability to contribute. The question is: how can we make it 1)interesting 2) accessible 3)easy to understand what the various tasks are 4)possible to spread the word about it? Question 2 requires a definition of contribute, e.g. is a bug submission contribution? Is helping another user via the mailing list a contribution? Users support, yes. Q5 answers above, therefore should appear in the survey before q2! Q11 what is the relevance of knowing users' locations? Agree with Mr Springer's message. LO people should simply read the mailing list; every random date, select a random number of mailing lists threads, read, analyse and consider whether further action is necessary. You will get much better information than a biased survey I read Mr Springer's message and we do not want to have a biased survey at all. One of the reasons we came up with a survey is that we were precisely not able to get the big picture by reading mailing lists. It's important to note that there is no good or bad answer in this survey, it's about understanding opportunities we could create for users. Most if not all of these surveys that tend to be biased in some way, and all of multiple choice surveys in general, have the same problem. Not enough options for the user. IMO, the survey could simply be modified, and then the construction of the questions as well as the actual questions aren't so important. 1. Always have a None of the above selection 2. Allow the selection of more than one option, or no option at all. 3. Always have a comments window for each page so you can explain your choice(s). Multiple choice only limits the feedback you get. 4. At the end of survey, have a general comments section where the user can express just about anything regarding LO. Surveys constructed without the above features will almost always be biased in some way. A scenario: 100 people check out the survey. 40 of them are like me, they can't give you accurate answers. They exit, and you just lost 40% of potentially useable information. All surveys are meant to tell the originator(s) information they want to know. But the information you want may not be what you *need* to know to be successful. I could go on about why I'm looking for LO alternatives, but that's not the topic of this thread. If you are interested and have the time, I'd discuss LO off list. The email address in the header is valid. Last but not least the geography might count, yes. You do not see your contribution potential whether you're in a country that has ubiquitous broadband or in a country where most people connect to the internet via phones or for the wealthiest, satellite. The geography info also tells you where your users are, also. That can be helpful to identify where you may need to find out why usage in some locations is low. Low usage may not have anything to do with LO at all. As for satellite usage, wealthiest does not always apply if you consider only cost alone, not speed. I've lived at my location for 9.5 years. Modem and true satellite (no mixed systems) were the only options until 2-3 years ago when a main trunk line was replaced with fiber optics. I had satellite for many years. For the same price, DSL basically just gave me more speeds and unlimited data. Not enough difference in price for the base packages to really be a factor. I do hope you have the time to contact me via email. (HTML preferred) I'd like to see some serious competition for MS Office, but there appears to be none, either open source or commercial. First of all: thank you for your advice on the survey! I'm sure we can improve for the next one :-) As for contacting you via email. This is not how we work as a Free Open Source Software project and as a community. You're welcome to express your views here or even on our discuss list. You can even open a page on our wiki, keeping in mind that ideas, when they remain ideas and when no one's working on them, are cheap. Making them real is what matters. What propels the LibreOffice project are ourselves, which means our own work; we can't make things happen overnight by shoveling money here and resources there. We don't have a marketing director (inasmuch as I'm supposedly in charge of the marketing team with Italo Vignoli) who can slap twenty market research studies on the table defining where
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hi Ken, Let's start with some general points to start with. First, the user. For most home users, who probably are not as experienced or knowledgeable of Word and LO as you and I, the advanced features are not needed. So something simpler to use, like Kingsoft Office Free, are more suited to those users. Granted, but then Kingsoft Office Free *is* serious competition to MS Office. There's also Google Docs, which has a fair amount of business interest, so I think that also qualifies. If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot better. Sure, if you want to convince a large portion of the user base to switch, but just to offer a viable alternative that's not true. To be serious competition, you just have to be roughly as good. Pricing is not that important anymore. I think it is still one consideration. As are moral issues, and trust issues, and vendor lock-in issues. In my opinion, MS has repeatedly shown that they are willing to take steps that are actively detrimental to their users, so I no longer trust their products. This won't be everyone's concern, but there are some good reasons to seek alternatives. And you aren't competing with just MS Office, you're also competing with every other document program out there. No, I don't think you are at all. Firstly, your statement was about competition to MS Office, but I think we've determined that there *is* serious competition to MS Office. Now we're discussing how relevant LO is. And, like MS Office, LO has its place, and that place isn't in head-to-head competition with the likes of Lyx, Tex, Inkscape and Scribus. MS Office isn't trying to compete with those products either. For something more specific: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44871 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46986 Working around these issues creates more work for the user than doing the same things in Word. Would you switch to a program that causes more work for you? I'm sure there are people on this list that can site bugs in MS Office that make certain things easier to do in LO. That's just bugs, all software has those; the question is how many affect any given individual person, and that will determine which product he/she finds easiest/nicest to use. Personally I don't find that many bugs with LO, definitely not enough to make me want to switch to MS Office. Then, there is this thread I started 10/29/13: news://news.gmane.org:119/l4pbem$2ud$1...@ger.gmane.org In case the link doesn't work in your reader/email/whatever, the subject is Picture size controls. People who've used Word will expect that feature to work similarly, since the text in the dialogue box has a very similar meaning. Well, yes, but again, this is a difference of expectation. You can't judge LO's ability to be a viable alternative purely based on how exactly it mirrors MS Office. Then you're not talking about serious competition, but about a serious *clone*. But it *is* important to me. If features I use do not work or work correctly, why would I stay? That's why I'm looking for new alternatives to to LO. This is basically saying LO doesn't work for me, so it doesn't work for anybody. This may be why you don't personally like it, but I don't think it would be correct to say it isn't competition to MS Office just because you don't like it. Plenty of people don't have the issues you seem to have with it. Remember, I didn't ask why you had issues with LO. I am perfectly fine with you having a different experience to mine, and mine isn't perfect by any means (just better than MS Office's, or at least good enough that I prefer to use LO). I asked why you said that there wasn't any serious competition to MS Office. I don't see that as a fair statement of LO and the other good products out there. I think we've established that LO *is* serious competition to MS Office, as well as at least Kingsoft Office Free, and possibly Google Docs. That said, you have enough issues with LO that you don't like using it. Fair enough. YMMV, but plenty of people prefer it. Out of interest, how many issues do you have with MS Office? If you started looking at MS Office with as critical an eye as you have been looking at LO, wouldn't you also find enough issues that you would be frustrated and looking elsewhere? Just a thought. Paul -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Good morning, Charles, On 11/3/13 5:29 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello Ken, Le Sat, 02 Nov 2013 09:07:57 -0600, Ken Springer snowsh...@q.com a écrit : On 11/2/13 3:48 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Le Fri, 1 Nov 2013 22:59:33 +, e-letter inp...@gmail.com a écrit : On 01/11/2013, Charles-H. Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org wrote: snip I've taken the liberty of snipping the older parts of this subthread, since I won't be addressing any of those points. First of all: thank you for your advice on the survey! I'm sure we can improve for the next one :-) You're welcome. And I look forward to an improved survey. As for contacting you via email. This is not how we work as a Free Open Source Software project and as a community. You're welcome to express your views here or even on our discuss list. You can even open a page on our wiki, keeping in mind that ideas, when they remain ideas and when no one's working on them, are cheap. Making them real is what matters. I've learned not all open source projects have this view. Some, much more restrictive in public comments, some just tell you we don't care if it doesn't work, fix it yourself or words to that effect. So I chose the conservative approach. G What propels the LibreOffice project are ourselves, which means our own work; we can't make things happen overnight by shoveling money here and resources there. We don't have a marketing director (inasmuch as I'm supposedly in charge of the marketing team with Italo Vignoli) who can slap twenty market research studies on the table defining where we should go in the future. We rely mostly on volunteers' work and contributions. Years ago, I learned that in almost anything, you're better off in the long run to do a few things very well, rather than a lot of things just adequately. For LO, I've seen new features added that have issues for some users, while existing issues for users languish. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44871 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46986 Those are two bugs I filed via Bugzilla, and noted them in news://news.gmane.org:119/l5422q$ac7$1...@ger.gmane.org. I don't expect them to be fixed immediately, but IMO they could've been addressed by now. But, the last time I checked, not even assigned. Perhaps some may think of it as excuses: they're not. This is how we work, this is what we do and this is how we are. If things were different we'd be working in a company developing and selling an office suite. But we are LibreOffice. And we'd love you to be part of LibreOffice too. This is where survey comes in... But I can't give you honest and anywhere complete answers via the existing survey. Hence, my first reply to your post about the survey. As I mentioned in the post linked (hopefully) above, I've got a list of things that didn't work correctly, at least for me (cross platform development may play a part here, I honestly don't know) in 3.x.x, but haven't retested except for the two bugs above. Which, by the way, still do not work right. I use my computer and software more as a tool and communications system, I'm not a gamer. Games bore me. But I want to use the tool, not build the tool. I don't mind reporting issues, if the reporting system is easy for the average person to use (Bugzilla is not) and confirming a fix works for me. In between, that part of the process no longer interests me. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 24.0 Thunderbird 17.0.8 LibreOffice 4.1.2.3 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/03/2013 12:56 PM, Paul wrote: For something more specific: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44871 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46986 Working around these issues creates more work for the user than doing the same things in Word. Would you switch to a program that causes more work for you? I'm sure there are people on this list that can site bugs in MS Office That must be a reference to the fact that the mean time between starting MSO on Windows, and seeing the Blue Screen of Death is under sixty seconds. (It was MSO 2K3 on WinXP machines that got me banned from Kinko's, because every time I started MSO on those systems, the Blue Screen of Death appeared. But that behaviour has consistently occurred whenever I fire up MSO on a Windows system.) Or maybe it is a reference to the fact that MSO 2013 is so completely, utterly, and absolutely incompatible with MSO 2013, that the only logical conclusion is that the two programs -- MSO 2013 MSO 2013 --- were designed by two different companies intent on producing software that won't work with anything created by the other company. Ditto for MSO 2010, MSO 2003, MSO XP, MSO2K, MSO97, and MSO95. jonathon -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Charles-H. Schulz: Many people who contribute to the LibreOffice project discussed the need for us to understand how we could enroll regular users (whatever that means) to the LibreOffice project. The LO project is suffering from rock star syndrome: through all those years there is a bunch of jackasses whom we all know but whom I will not name here, who has obtained the monopolistic control over the project due to their ultimate knowledge of its architecture and functioning. They abuse that power to bolster their own egos as if LO was their pet project. Until some public 'whippings' or 'executions' of those will take place, LO will be looking as an unwelcoming place and its perspectives will be unclear. Let's remember the ongoing sabotage of interoperation with ubiquitous formats of data exchange: Excel 95 and its newer alternative Excel XML. Who will support a project where such idiocy can go unpunished? -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
jonathon: That must be a reference to the fact that the mean time between starting MSO on Windows, and seeing the Blue Screen of Death is under sixty seconds. /yawn Or maybe it is a reference to the fact that MSO 2013 is so completely, utterly, and absolutely incompatible with MSO 2013, FUD and absurd statements will take LO nowhere. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/3/13 5:56 AM, Paul wrote: Hi Ken, Let's start with some general points to start with. First, the user. For most home users, who probably are not as experienced or knowledgeable of Word and LO as you and I, the advanced features are not needed. So something simpler to use, like Kingsoft Office Free, are more suited to those users. Granted, but then Kingsoft Office Free *is* serious competition to MS Office. Before you can say any program *is* serious competition, you have to determine which products, or product levels, you are going to compare. Office is available in many forms, similar to the different levels of comfort/convenience packages in automobiles. LO comes in just one flavor. Kingsoft Office in 2 flavors. Chocolate and Vanilla. OK, that's not quite right. LOL A quick comparison of what the the three packages offer, top of the line, for Windows: MS Office Pro Libre Office Kingsoft Pro WordWriter Writer Excel Calc Spreadsheets PowerPoint Presentation Presentation OneNote Base Outlook Drawing Publisher Access SkyDrive Notes for the above list: 1. The items listed are from the respective websites. Office 2007, the last Office I purchased, has additional tools available. I would assume the same for 2013. 2. I did not include Formula for LO as the formula editor in Office is an optional plugin for Word. 3. To the best of my knowledge, Office has never included a vector drawing module. Using a feature by feature comparison, there is no way LO or Kingsoft is serious competition for Office Pro. But, if you compare the less comprehensive versions of Office: Office Home and Student Office Home and Business WordWord Excel Excel PowerPoint PowerPoint OneNote OneNote Outlook The only feature lists that are similar is LO vs. Office Home and Business. I will agree that LO is competition *only* for Home and Business. Even then, I suspect most businesses will find an email program more valuable than a vector drawing program. MS Office 365 is cloud based, so LO isn't competition there at all. I doubt there is anything on the level of MS Office Pro out there. Corel was making a serious push in this direction at one time, damned near destroyed them. I don't know the full complement of WP Office at the time, but they have dropped the database component the last time I looked. And no Mac version. There's also Google Docs, which has a fair amount of business interest, so I think that also qualifies. I haven't trusted Google for anything except search abilities since Google and Facebook were caught violating their own privacy agreements. If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot better. Sure, if you want to convince a large portion of the user base to switch, but just to offer a viable alternative that's not true. To be serious competition, you just have to be roughly as good. Those are standards I do not accept. You should aspire to be the best you can be, not just good enough. Yugos were good enough. Pricing is not that important anymore. I think it is still one consideration. As are moral issues, and trust issues, and vendor lock-in issues. In my opinion, MS has repeatedly shown that they are willing to take steps that are actively detrimental to their users, so I no longer trust their products. This won't be everyone's concern, but there are some good reasons to seek alternatives. And you aren't competing with just MS Office, you're also competing with every other document program out there. No, I don't think you are at all. Firstly, your statement was about competition to MS Office, but I think we've determined that there *is* serious competition to MS Office. Au contraire, my friend, as I just pointed out with the charts above, LO is competition to the mid-level version of Office only. And you aren't competing against *just* MSO, you are competing with every other office package out there. Ford doesn't just compete with Chevy, they compete with Honda, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Mini-Cooper, ET. AL. Now we're discussing how relevant LO is. And, like MS
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/3/13 9:05 AM, Urmas wrote: Charles-H. Schulz: Many people who contribute to the LibreOffice project discussed the need for us to understand how we could enroll regular users (whatever that means) to the LibreOffice project. Just FYI here, I would consider regular users those who still think the CD tray is a cup holder!LOL Joking aside, I think they are the users who turn on the computer, have no clues as to computer basics, but think since they can get a letter to ?? typed out and printed, think they know how to use computers. snip -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 24.0 Thunderbird 17.0.8 LibreOffice 4.1.2.3 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Sure, LO does not have as many modules as the professional version of MSO. That said, since there are already FOSS packages to do many of those missing modules, why should LO have their developers work on those as well as the basic office suite modules? Word --LO Writer plugin--LO Formula Excel --LO Calc PowerPoint--LO Presentation OneNote--. . . there should be free packages or extensions to replace this [never used this] Outlook -- . . . Mozilla Thunderbird or other FOSS email clients and their extensions should do the job [does for me] Publisher-- . . . Inkscape [maybe] or maybe Scribus for some jobs Access --LO Base SkyDrive --. . . there should be free services to replace this [never used this, but have used a cloud drive once] none included -- LO Drawing So, Lo does not include all of the modules of MSO. So what. You are able to add and remove modules of MSO depending on your need. So, if you do not have a module in the LO office suite, you add a FOSS package to give you that functionality. That is what I have done over the years. Sure it is hard to find any FOSS package that reads .pub files, but there are FOSS packages that will create the same projects as Publisher will do. They may not work the same as Publisher, but they get the job[s] done. SkyDrive, what is so important to have that name brand, when you can do the job with other packages and services? The real mindset, for me, is if there is already a FOSS package, or just a free one, that does the job of these extra modules of MSO, then why should the developers really spend their valuable time recreating them. Why do we need a LO Email when there are several good packages out there that has a many year development cycle behind it. Our developers would need years of work to get that far along. Someone once suggested having other LO modules that would make a all in one office suite of software marketing statement, but the goal of LO, seems to me, for creating the best office suite that includes a word processor, spread sheet, presentation, data base front end, vector drawing package, and a mathematical formula creation editor. It never was, in my opinion, a goal to create a replacement for Outlook or a cloud service. How will a free software company pay for the hardware and bandwidth to offer a cloud-based service? There are plenty of email clients and web mail clients to do the work of Outlook and services to replace SkyDrive. I know I have seen references on these lists for options that replace OneNote for LO users. I do not remember what they were though. Since I never used OneNote, I can not tell what would be the best option to do what it does. As for a serious competition for MSO, well look at the FOSS record in Europe. I would say LO is a serious contender due to the fact that more and more large organizations, plus regional and national governments are scrapping MSO for LO and other FOSS options. Do anyone remember the news out of France? It seems that they are dropping MSO country-wide and opting for LO and FOSS instead. This is a trend that is happening at the local, regional, and national levels of countries world-wide. USA, not so much, but there is a government mandate for the use of FOSS as an option. I keep hearing form a few people about Kingsoft, but others are warning me away from using it, due to some privacy issues. So, I cannot judge the good or bad about that software. So, for my home-based office, I use LO and FOSS and not MSO. The newest MSO I have is 2003. I do not plan on buying any newer one. On 11/03/2013 11:32 AM, Ken Springer wrote: On 11/3/13 5:56 AM, Paul wrote: Hi Ken, Let's start with some general points to start with. First, the user. For most home users, who probably are not as experienced or knowledgeable of Word and LO as you and I, the advanced features are not needed. So something simpler to use, like Kingsoft Office Free, are more suited to those users. Granted, but then Kingsoft Office Free *is* serious competition to MS Office. Before you can say any program *is* serious competition, you have to determine which products, or product levels, you are going to compare. Office is available in many forms, similar to the different levels of comfort/convenience packages in automobiles. LO comes in just one flavor. Kingsoft Office in 2 flavors. Chocolate and Vanilla. OK, that's not quite right. LOL A quick comparison of what the the three packages offer, top of the line, for Windows: MS Office ProLibre OfficeKingsoft Pro WordWriterWriter ExcelCalcSpreadsheets PowerPointPresentationPresentation OneNoteBase Outlook
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hi, Am 03.11.2013 18:36, schrieb Kracked_P_P---webmaster: Access --LO Base Base does not replace Access and it´s not meant to do so. ;-) Stefan -- LibreOffice - Die Freiheit nehm' ich mir! -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
To shorten up this message, I've deleted all but Kracked's reply. On 11/3/13 10:36 AM, Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote: Sure, LO does not have as many modules as the professional version of MSO. That said, since there are already FOSS packages to do many of those missing modules, why should LO have their developers work on those as well as the basic office suite modules? Word --LO Writer plugin--LO Formula Excel --LO Calc PowerPoint--LO Presentation OneNote--. . . there should be free packages or extensions to replace this [never used this] Outlook -- . . . Mozilla Thunderbird or other FOSS email clients and their extensions should do the job [does for me] Publisher-- . . . Inkscape [maybe] or maybe Scribus for some jobs Access --LO Base SkyDrive --. . . there should be free services to replace this [never used this, but have used a cloud drive once] none included -- LO Drawing The subject is to compare suite to suite, not suite to suite plus others. When you start adding the plus others, you can turn your computer in to just about anything, and the comparison becomes useless/meaningless. Publisher and Inkscape are not the same thing. Although you can use Inkscape for some very basic DTP items. But I dare you to set up a book or manual with it. People used to do, and may still do, the same thing with Corel Draw. If you want to add additional software for the LO side of your example, then you have to allow the same additions on the MSO side. Level playing field, and all of that. Which modifies your list to the following, at least: Publisher -- Scribus Inkscape-- Inkscape The playing field is one program compared to one program, not one program to many programs. So, Lo does not include all of the modules of MSO. So what. You are able to add and remove modules of MSO depending on your need. So, if you do not have a module in the LO office suite, you add a FOSS package to give you that functionality. That is what I have done over the years. The point is, the modules are part of MSO, supplied by MSO. Comparable modules are not supplied by MSO. I am comparing suites, not computers. I don't care, for the purpose of this discussion, if the computers can do the same thing. Can the same type of suites do the same thing? If you want to compare the final abilities of the computer, then you have to allow substitutions for the MS side of the comparison as well. So, let's substitute Adobe Pagemaker for Publisher, and Corel Draw for Inkscape. Which side offers the user more horsepower for the job? Sure it is hard to find any FOSS package that reads .pub files, but there are FOSS packages that will create the same projects as Publisher will do. They may not work the same as Publisher, but they get the job[s] done. It's hard to find anything that reads .pub files, even older .pub files. The job gets done *only* if the software is capable of doing the job. A pickup does essentially the same job as Kenworth tractor w/ 40' flatbed. But there are jobs the pickup can't do. SkyDrive, what is so important to have that name brand, when you can do the job with other packages and services? Once again, comparing suite to suite only, not suite to a range of software. The inherent problem faced by the range of software solutions is the interoperability of the range of software. Which doesn't always work well. The real mindset, for me, is if there is already a FOSS package, or just a free one, that does the job of these extra modules of MSO, then why should the developers really spend their valuable time recreating them. Why do we need a LO Email when there are several good packages out there that has a many year development cycle behind it. Our developers would need years of work to get that far along. Someone once suggested having other LO modules that would make a all in one office suite of software marketing statement, but the goal of LO, seems to me, for creating the best office suite that includes a word processor, spread sheet, presentation, data base front end, vector drawing package, and a mathematical formula creation editor. It never was, in my opinion, a goal to create a replacement for Outlook or a cloud service. How will a free software company pay for the hardware and bandwidth to offer a cloud-based service? There are plenty of email clients and web mail clients to do the work of Outlook and services to replace SkyDrive. Interoperability, for one. Just because FOSS program A creates an .svg file, doesn't mean FOSS program B can correctly read it. But if Word creates a .docx file, all the other modules in Office that are designed to read the .docx file will be able to do that. Barring bugs, of course. I've stipulated that LO *is* comparable to MSO Home and Office. But
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On Sun, Nov 03, 2013 at 11:14:08PM +0700, Urmas wrote: jonathon: That must be a reference to the fact that the mean time between starting MSO on Windows, and seeing the Blue Screen of Death is under sixty seconds. /yawn Or maybe it is a reference to the fact that MSO 2013 is so completely, utterly, and absolutely incompatible with MSO 2013, FUD and absurd statements will take LO nowhere. FUD you say? Pot meet kettle. -- Bob Holtzman Your mail is being read by tight lipped NSA agents who fail to see humor in Doctor Strangelove Key ID 8D549279 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hi Ken, Before you can say any program *is* serious competition, you have to determine which products, or product levels, you are going to compare. Office is available in many forms, similar to the different levels of comfort/convenience packages in automobiles. LO comes in just one flavor. Kingsoft Office in 2 flavors. Chocolate and Vanilla. OK, that's not quite right. LOL Ok, granted, but when someones says MS Office (like you did) I happen to think primarily of Word and Excel. I'll even normally consider that Powerpoint and Access are in there. I don't consider OneNote (never used it, no idea what it is), Outlook or Publisher to be part of that package. That may be old fashioned of me, but I don't recall ever having an MS Office version that came with Publisher. That was always in one of the premium, too-expensive-to-even-consider packages. And I'd never even heard of SkyDrive till now. I'll grant you that a lot of people do use Outlook as part of the package, and it is more than just an email client, but for me it's a different application altogether, and not what I typically think of when I think of an office suite. So I finally see your real argument (the bugs and stuff, as I said, being a red herring): No other office suite, LO included, can compete against the full spectrum of software provided by the premium version of MS Office. I have to agree with that. That said, personally, I would still regard LO as serious competition to MS Office. The mindset of must use MS Office, because everybody else uses it is the greatest barrier to uptake of *anything* but MSO, but I believe enough people are starting to shift out of that mindset. So that aside, enough people will consider LO as an alternative to MSO, because it does everything they need. Yes, there are some people that need the advanced features of MSO, and yes even more people need Outlook, but enough people don't need the advanced features only available in the premium editions, and prefer a third party email application anyway, so for them LO provides all they need as an alternative to MSO, and it does that job well. That for me makes it serious competition. But that's a difference of opinion on what the statement means. And now that I understand what you meant, my question is answered. Thank you. And you aren't competing against *just* MSO, you are competing with every other office package out there. Ford doesn't just compete with Chevy, they compete with Honda, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Mini-Cooper, ET. AL. This is just confusing the issue. You *are* competing against *just* MSO when the question is about a viable alternative to MSO. None of the other packages are relevant to the discussion of is LO a viable alternative to MSO Paul -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hi, Paul, On 11/3/13 1:53 PM, Paul wrote: Hi Ken, Before you can say any program *is* serious competition, you have to determine which products, or product levels, you are going to compare. Office is available in many forms, similar to the different levels of comfort/convenience packages in automobiles. LO comes in just one flavor. Kingsoft Office in 2 flavors. Chocolate and Vanilla. OK, that's not quite right. LOL Ok, granted, but when someones says MS Office (like you did) I happen to think primarily of Word and Excel. I'll even normally consider that Powerpoint and Access are in there. When I say MS Office, I'm always talking Pro, since I include having Access as part of the meaning of the phrase. We both made the same error of not being exactly clear about the contents of MS Office. It's like talking about a 2013 Prius. When it came out, there was only one model, and when you said Prius, everyone knew which car you meant. Now, I think there are 5 Prius models, so everyone needs to know which model you are discussing. I don't consider OneNote (never used it, no idea what it is), I just looked at OneNote, it's like a massive sticky note on steroids. It looks like you can stick any kind of document, file, handwritten notes, audio files, all in the same sticky note. Look like it's part word processor, part spreadsheet, part just about anything you can think of. This looks like it could be a great thing if you're part of a team and in the brainstorming stage. Everyone can add their own thoughts, notes, files, audio clips, I have no idea what else. LO has nothing like this. In fact, I've never seen anything like it. Outlook or Publisher to be part of that package. That may be old fashioned of me, but I don't recall ever having an MS Office version that came with Publisher. That was always in one of the premium, too-expensive-to-even-consider packages. Outlook and Publisher used to be available only as standalone packages. They weren't part of Office Professional 4.3 (Windows for Workgroups days), but it's part of Office Professional 2003. And I'd never even heard of SkyDrive till now. Basically, I consider it MS's answer to Apple's iCloud. I don't know the specifics of either systems as I don't use either one. AFAIK, anyone can use SkyDrive, you don't have to have MSO of any flavor. Just an MS account for Windows Live, or whatever they call it now. I'll grant you that a lot of people do use Outlook as part of the package, and it is more than just an email client, but for me it's a different application altogether, and not what I typically think of when I think of an office suite. At one time, I used Outlook 2007 as my email client. Simply installed only that program from my copy of Office Professional 2007. G Everyone is free to consider the contents of Office however they want. But, if it's going to be part of a discussion, then people need to be specific about what they are talking about so there's no confusion. So I finally see your real argument (the bugs and stuff, as I said, being a red herring): No other office suite, LO included, can compete against the full spectrum of software provided by the premium version of MS Office. I have to agree with that. In another post or two, I stipulated that LO and Office Home and Business were competitive. Now that I've read about OneNote, and have an inkling about it's potential, I have to take that statement back. I think LO lags behind just a bit. That said, personally, I would still regard LO as serious competition to MS Office. LOL But, which version of MS Office! G The mindset of must use MS Office, because everybody else uses it is the greatest barrier to uptake of *anything* but MSO, but I believe enough people are starting to shift out of that mindset. You won't get any argument about the mindset from me. None at all. And you certainly don't want to be replacing I have to have MSO ???) with I have to have LO. But if you are truly going to avoid any mindset, you have to be willing to consider other office suite options. There's all the heritage that LO belongs to, and that includes Open Office, Lotus Symphony, and Oxygen Office, all of which I know little about. Maybe there's others, I don't know. Plus other office suites, such as Ashampoo, Alantis, Ssuite, Softmaker Office, Abiword, Crystal Office, SS Office (aka Ssuite I've mentioned), Papyrus, Kingsoft, and who knows how many others. I tried the word processor for SS Office a few weeks ago, I really liked the interface. But I didn't try to get serious with it as there's no Mac version. I went on a search for MSO alternatives one time, can you tell? LOL If considering an alternative, the correct way to look for something is to sit down, take your time, and analyze what you are currently doing with MSO, any package. Then download and try out the alternatives, and pick the one that
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/03/2013 06:53 PM, Robert Holtzman wrote: FUD and absurd statements will take LO nowhere. FUD you say? Pot meet kettle. What he does not want to admit is that I am speaking from personal experience. jonathon * English - detected * English * English javascript:void(0); -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/03/2013 06:32 PM, Stefan Weigel wrote: Access --LO Base Base does not replace Access and it´s not meant to do so. The dBase 3 clone was not removed when Base was added to LO. I reinstalled LO and AOO earlier this week. When doing my usual customizations, I noticed that in the database part of .config, the same filename was used for the file in it, as was used when dBase was the only database engine included in OOo. I'll assume that that is the same dBase file, and that both AOO and LO still include the internal clone dBase engine. jonathon -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/03/2013 04:32 PM, Ken Springer wrote: Using a feature by feature comparison, there is no way LO or Kingsoft is serious competition for Office Pro. A point you are missing, is that even in a corporate environment, all of the parts offered by MSO Pro are not needed by all of the employees who use the office suite. If it was cheaper for the company to buy three quarters of the staff MSO home edition, and a quarter MSO business edition, and a quarter MSO Pro, they would do that. Microsoft's cheapest business license is for MSO Pro. Assuming it is still offered, the most expensive license is for MSO Enterprise edition. If you want to compare office suite with office suite, MSO Enterprise Edition is the only thing on the market, that offers all of the programs, from the same software maker. All of the other, similar solutions, use packages form several different software vendors. ( I don't know if Microsoft still offers MSO Enterprise Edition. Back when the business I was working at looked at it, it was not listed on the Microsoft Product Page alongside the other MSO offerings.) If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot better. To be serious competition, you just have to be roughly as good. Those are standards I do not accept. You should aspire to be the best you can be, not just good enough. Yugos were good enough. Good enough is the mortal enemy of superior. Au contraire, my friend, as I just pointed out with the charts above, LO is competition to the mid-level version of Office only. For 80% of the MSO user base, MSO Pro is overkill, which is why LO is a more appropriate option that MSO Pro. Ford doesn't just compete with Chevy, they compete with Honda, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Mini-Cooper, ET. AL. At least you didn't put Lamborghini in that list. As noted above, I've listed why LO is not serious competition except for a single version of Office. You do realize that Microsoft has stated several times, in public, that OOo was the direct cause of their lower earnings, and reduced profitability, don't you. As such, even if it was only one version of MSO that you consider it competitive with, it took enough marketshare away from Microsoft, that they decided it was better to offer their product gratis, with embedded advertising, than to compete on the basis of features within the product. jonathon -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/3/13 6:49 PM, jonathon wrote: On 11/03/2013 04:32 PM, Ken Springer wrote: Using a feature by feature comparison, there is no way LO or Kingsoft is serious competition for Office Pro. A point you are missing, is that even in a corporate environment, all of the parts offered by MSO Pro are not needed by all of the employees who use the office suite. But in total, all parts offered by MSO Pro may be used by someone in the company. Regardless, that's irrelevant to the discussion. That discussion is which MSO offering is LO nearest to. If it was cheaper for the company to buy three quarters of the staff MSO home edition, and a quarter MSO business edition, and a quarter MSO Pro, they would do that. But they can't. So it's moot. Microsoft's cheapest business license is for MSO Pro. Assuming it is still offered, the most expensive license is for MSO Enterprise edition. MSO Enterprise may be available, but it's not on the website. Didn't spend a lot of time searching, but found no Enterprise 2013. If you want to compare office suite with office suite, MSO Enterprise Edition is the only thing on the market, that offers all of the programs, from the same software maker. All of the other, similar solutions, use packages form several different software vendors. I'm missing something here, would you expand on this? ( I don't know if Microsoft still offers MSO Enterprise Edition. Back when the business I was working at looked at it, it was not listed on the Microsoft Product Page alongside the other MSO offerings.) If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot better. To be serious competition, you just have to be roughly as good. Those are standards I do not accept. You should aspire to be the best you can be, not just good enough. Yugos were good enough. Good enough is the mortal enemy of superior. Not in the long run, if you want to be, for lack of a better phrase, in first place. Sooner or later, someone kicks your butt off the pedestal. Au contraire, my friend, as I just pointed out with the charts above, LO is competition to the mid-level version of Office only. For 80% of the MSO user base, MSO Pro is overkill, which is why LO is a more appropriate option that MSO Pro. That depends on the users needs. While I agree with your many will buy Pro when it's not needed, that's also irrelevant to the discussion. Ford doesn't just compete with Chevy, they compete with Honda, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Mini-Cooper, ET. AL. At least you didn't put Lamborghini in that list. Dang, I knew there was one I missed.LOL As noted above, I've listed why LO is not serious competition except for a single version of Office. You do realize that Microsoft has stated several times, in public, that OOo was the direct cause of their lower earnings, and reduced profitability, don't you. So? How is that relevant to a discussion/comparison of features? All that statement does is confirms Paul's assertion that the mindset of you have to have MS Office is weakening. As such, even if it was only one version of MSO that you consider it competitive with, it took enough marketshare away from Microsoft, that they decided it was better to offer their product gratis, with embedded advertising, than to compete on the basis of features within the product. Which MSO product is gratis? There's a price tag for all 4 packages of MSO, but there's is a first month free trial period for Office 365 after which it's a monthly subscription fee. I couldn't tell if that process is one that requires you to expressly cancel the subscription or not. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/compare-microsoft-office-products-FX102898564.aspx -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 24.0 Thunderbird 17.0.8 LibreOffice 4.1.2.3 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/2/13 3:48 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Le Fri, 1 Nov 2013 22:59:33 +, e-letter inp...@gmail.com a écrit : On 01/11/2013, Charles-H. Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org wrote: But when we come to think of it, these people started somewhere, one day, to contribute, and while they all have their own reasons, we (the people in charge of marketing) thought that everybody has the ability to contribute. The question is: how can we make it 1)interesting 2) accessible 3)easy to understand what the various tasks are 4)possible to spread the word about it? Question 2 requires a definition of contribute, e.g. is a bug submission contribution? Is helping another user via the mailing list a contribution? Users support, yes. Q5 answers above, therefore should appear in the survey before q2! Q11 what is the relevance of knowing users' locations? Agree with Mr Springer's message. LO people should simply read the mailing list; every random date, select a random number of mailing lists threads, read, analyse and consider whether further action is necessary. You will get much better information than a biased survey I read Mr Springer's message and we do not want to have a biased survey at all. One of the reasons we came up with a survey is that we were precisely not able to get the big picture by reading mailing lists. It's important to note that there is no good or bad answer in this survey, it's about understanding opportunities we could create for users. Most if not all of these surveys that tend to be biased in some way, and all of multiple choice surveys in general, have the same problem. Not enough options for the user. IMO, the survey could simply be modified, and then the construction of the questions as well as the actual questions aren't so important. 1. Always have a None of the above selection 2. Allow the selection of more than one option, or no option at all. 3. Always have a comments window for each page so you can explain your choice(s). Multiple choice only limits the feedback you get. 4. At the end of survey, have a general comments section where the user can express just about anything regarding LO. Surveys constructed without the above features will almost always be biased in some way. A scenario: 100 people check out the survey. 40 of them are like me, they can't give you accurate answers. They exit, and you just lost 40% of potentially useable information. All surveys are meant to tell the originator(s) information they want to know. But the information you want may not be what you *need* to know to be successful. I could go on about why I'm looking for LO alternatives, but that's not the topic of this thread. If you are interested and have the time, I'd discuss LO off list. The email address in the header is valid. Last but not least the geography might count, yes. You do not see your contribution potential whether you're in a country that has ubiquitous broadband or in a country where most people connect to the internet via phones or for the wealthiest, satellite. The geography info also tells you where your users are, also. That can be helpful to identify where you may need to find out why usage in some locations is low. Low usage may not have anything to do with LO at all. As for satellite usage, wealthiest does not always apply if you consider only cost alone, not speed. I've lived at my location for 9.5 years. Modem and true satellite (no mixed systems) were the only options until 2-3 years ago when a main trunk line was replaced with fiber optics. I had satellite for many years. For the same price, DSL basically just gave me more speeds and unlimited data. Not enough difference in price for the base packages to really be a factor. I do hope you have the time to contact me via email. (HTML preferred) I'd like to see some serious competition for MS Office, but there appears to be none, either open source or commercial. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 24.0 Thunderbird 17.0.8 LibreOffice 4.1.2.3 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hi Ken, I'd like to see some serious competition for MS Office, but there appears to be none, either open source or commercial. Why do you say there is no serious competition to MS Office? Personally, I find LO to be slightly easier to use than MS Office (although the difference is negligible, barring the ribbon, which I find terrible), and just as functional for all my needs, and most of the needs I have ever seen anybody use. I grant you that there are possibly some advanced uses of Excel in particular that LO may not be equal to, and integration with things like Exchange and Active Directory that MS Office obviously has the edge in, but I have never seen these in practice. I'm interested to know what aspects you find lacking in LO. Paul -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hi, Paul, On 11/2/13 4:23 PM, Paul wrote: Hi Ken, I'd like to see some serious competition for MS Office, but there appears to be none, either open source or commercial. Why do you say there is no serious competition to MS Office? Personally, I find LO to be slightly easier to use than MS Office (although the difference is negligible, barring the ribbon, which I find terrible), and just as functional for all my needs, and most of the needs I have ever seen anybody use. I grant you that there are possibly some advanced uses of Excel in particular that LO may not be equal to, and integration with things like Exchange and Active Directory that MS Office obviously has the edge in, but I have never seen these in practice. I'm interested to know what aspects you find lacking in LO. Let's start with some general points to start with. First, the user. For most home users, who probably are not as experienced or knowledgeable of Word and LO as you and I, the advanced features are not needed. So something simpler to use, like Kingsoft Office Free, are more suited to those users. And there are other free and commercial office products that offer .doc/.docx compatibility. I can't say how good it is, I've never sat down to try them. So LO and the other Ooo branches are not unique in that aspect, so LO is not the only game in town for that. I did recently ask a friend to write a letter of recommendation for a job application packet. She did it in Word on her Mac. Displayed like crap! Fortunately, printing it as a PDF file didn't exhibit any problems. BTW, I hate that frickin' ribbon too. Thankfully, you can turn it off and have the old menu system back. And any particular interface, hereinafter (lawyer-like enough? LOL) called the UI, may not fit a particular user. For about an hour a few weeks ago, I played with a product called SSOffice, or similar name, and I really, really liked the UI. Better than Word or LO. But it may not be for everyone. And it doesn't run on a Mac. :-( If you want to entice people to switch from Product X to LO, you not only have to be as good as Product X, you have to be a Helluva lot better. Pricing is not that important anymore. Gone are the days when standalone MS Word would be in the $300-$400 range. And if you're a business, that purchase is tax deductible. Free is just not good enough as a marketing tool anymore. And you aren't competing with just MS Office, you're also competing with every other document program out there, and that includes typesetting programs like LyX (free) used by many in the math and science world, and DTP software such as Scribus, Publisher, Adobe Pagemaker, and others in between. For something more specific: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44871 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46986 Working around these issues creates more work for the user than doing the same things in Word. Would you switch to a program that causes more work for you? Then, there is this thread I started 10/29/13: news://news.gmane.org:119/l4pbem$2ud$1...@ger.gmane.org In case the link doesn't work in your reader/email/whatever, the subject is Picture size controls. People who've used Word will expect that feature to work similarly, since the text in the dialogue box has a very similar meaning. Graphics programs that offer free drawing will use something like LO's method, but people working with documents will not have a clue. And it's also extra work compared to Word. When you have that option engaged in Word, when you are in the document just grab a handle and resize maintaining the aspect ratio until you get what you want. With LO, you have to experiment to get the right size you want. I have a list of other items in LO that didn't work right or as expected in 3.x.x that I have not double checked in 4.1.2.3. Why? It goes back to the two bugs above, that I filed. It's obviously not important to the developers. But it *is* important to me. If features I use do not work or work correctly, why would I stay? That's why I'm looking for new alternatives to to LO. And for my Windows friends, I recommend they try Kingsoft Office Free. You simply have to be better than the others. And I don't see that yet in LO. I will give LO the nod in help files, though often missing something. It's on the hard drive, you do not need internet access to read them as you do in Word. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 24.0 Thunderbird 17.0.8 LibreOffice 4.1.2.3 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/1/13 7:04 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello everyone, Thank you for choosing and using LibreOffice! My name is Charles-H. Schulz and I'm one of the co-founders of the Document Foundation. Many people who contribute to the LibreOffice project discussed the need for us to understand how we could enroll regular users (whatever that means) to the LibreOffice project. You obviously know that LibreOffice is Free Software and that it comes with rights and freedoms for you. But besides that LibreOffice is a software development project populated by a community of people who contribute their time and skills (and many skills are required, not just the technical ones!) on a volunteer or on a paid basis. But when we come to think of it, these people started somewhere, one day, to contribute, and while they all have their own reasons, we (the people in charge of marketing) thought that everybody has the ability to contribute. The question is: how can we make it 1)interesting 2) accessible 3)easy to understand what the various tasks are 4)possible to spread the word about it? ... And this is where you come in the picture. We worked on a short survey that's anonymous (we don't require your name nor your email) and we would really like it if you could take a few minutes of your time to answer these questions. As you will see they are all about understanding how we could include users of LibreOffice and turn them into contributors. The survey is here: https://survey.documentfoundation.org/index.php/574531/lang-en We hope you're having a great time and thank you again for using LibreOffice! Best regards, I went to do the survey, didn't complete it. From going through the pages, too many places didn't allow me to provide feedback on my interests as well as concerns before becoming involved. On a couple of pages, I would like to have selected more than one. IMO, surveys such as this are essentially slanted, and could give you the answers you want to hear, not the ones you should hear. Lastly, after clicking the Exit and Clear survey button, in the following window, the close this window button did not work, even in Safe Mode for Firefox. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 24.0 Thunderbird 17.0.8 LibreOffice 4.1.2.3 -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
On 11/1/2013 2:05 PM, Ken Springer wrote: On 11/1/13 7:04 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello everyone, Thank you for choosing and using LibreOffice! My name is Charles-H. Schulz and I'm one of the co-founders of the Document Foundation. Many people who contribute to the LibreOffice project discussed the need for us to understand how we could enroll regular users (whatever that means) to the LibreOffice project. You obviously know that LibreOffice is Free Software and that it comes with rights and freedoms for you. But besides that LibreOffice is a software development project populated by a community of people who contribute their time and skills (and many skills are required, not just the technical ones!) on a volunteer or on a paid basis. But when we come to think of it, these people started somewhere, one day, to contribute, and while they all have their own reasons, we (the people in charge of marketing) thought that everybody has the ability to contribute. The question is: how can we make it 1)interesting 2) accessible 3)easy to understand what the various tasks are 4)possible to spread the word about it? ... And this is where you come in the picture. We worked on a short survey that's anonymous (we don't require your name nor your email) and we would really like it if you could take a few minutes of your time to answer these questions. As you will see they are all about understanding how we could include users of LibreOffice and turn them into contributors. The survey is here: https://survey.documentfoundation.org/index.php/574531/lang-en We hope you're having a great time and thank you again for using LibreOffice! Best regards, I went to do the survey, didn't complete it. From going through the pages, too many places didn't allow me to provide feedback on my interests as well as concerns before becoming involved. On a couple of pages, I would like to have selected more than one. IMO, surveys such as this are essentially slanted, and could give you the answers you want to hear, not the ones you should hear. Lastly, after clicking the Exit and Clear survey button, in the following window, the close this window button did not work, even in Safe Mode for Firefox. I agree about the survey. The multiple-choice type answers did not reflect my answers. However, I had no trouble closing the window without completing the survey. -- Dale Erwin Jr. 28 de Julio 657, Depto. 03 Magdalena del Mar, Lima 17 PERU http://leather.casaerwin.org -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
*ditto* -Original Message- From: Dale Erwin [mailto:d...@casaerwin.org] Sent: Friday, November 01, 2013 6:04 PM To: users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project On 11/1/2013 2:05 PM, Ken Springer wrote: On 11/1/13 7:04 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello everyone, Thank you for choosing and using LibreOffice! My name is Charles-H. Schulz and I'm one of the co-founders of the Document Foundation. Many people who contribute to the LibreOffice project discussed the need for us to understand how we could enroll regular users (whatever that means) to the LibreOffice project. You obviously know that LibreOffice is Free Software and that it comes with rights and freedoms for you. But besides that LibreOffice is a software development project populated by a community of people who contribute their time and skills (and many skills are required, not just the technical ones!) on a volunteer or on a paid basis. But when we come to think of it, these people started somewhere, one day, to contribute, and while they all have their own reasons, we (the people in charge of marketing) thought that everybody has the ability to contribute. The question is: how can we make it 1)interesting 2) accessible 3)easy to understand what the various tasks are 4)possible to spread the word about it? ... And this is where you come in the picture. We worked on a short survey that's anonymous (we don't require your name nor your email) and we would really like it if you could take a few minutes of your time to answer these questions. As you will see they are all about understanding how we could include users of LibreOffice and turn them into contributors. The survey is here: https://survey.documentfoundation.org/index.php/574531/lang-en We hope you're having a great time and thank you again for using LibreOffice! Best regards, I went to do the survey, didn't complete it. From going through the pages, too many places didn't allow me to provide feedback on my interests as well as concerns before becoming involved. On a couple of pages, I would like to have selected more than one. IMO, surveys such as this are essentially slanted, and could give you the answers you want to hear, not the ones you should hear. Lastly, after clicking the Exit and Clear survey button, in the following window, the close this window button did not work, even in Safe Mode for Firefox. I agree about the survey. The multiple-choice type answers did not reflect my answers. However, I had no trouble closing the window without completing the survey. -- Dale Erwin Jr. 28 de Julio 657, Depto. 03 Magdalena del Mar, Lima 17 PERU http://leather.casaerwin.org -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project
Hi Charles and all: I agree with this survey and I think it would be usefull and I haven't problem to give my e-mail to Document Foundation. Regards, Jorge Rodríguez - Original Message - From: Dan Hall dih...@myfairpoint.net To: Dale Erwin d...@casaerwin.org, users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Friday, November 1, 2013 5:11:40 PM Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project *ditto* -Original Message- From: Dale Erwin [mailto:d...@casaerwin.org] Sent: Friday, November 01, 2013 6:04 PM To: users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Engaging Users in the LibreOffice Project On 11/1/2013 2:05 PM, Ken Springer wrote: On 11/1/13 7:04 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello everyone, Thank you for choosing and using LibreOffice! My name is Charles-H. Schulz and I'm one of the co-founders of the Document Foundation. Many people who contribute to the LibreOffice project discussed the need for us to understand how we could enroll regular users (whatever that means) to the LibreOffice project. You obviously know that LibreOffice is Free Software and that it comes with rights and freedoms for you. But besides that LibreOffice is a software development project populated by a community of people who contribute their time and skills (and many skills are required, not just the technical ones!) on a volunteer or on a paid basis. But when we come to think of it, these people started somewhere, one day, to contribute, and while they all have their own reasons, we (the people in charge of marketing) thought that everybody has the ability to contribute. The question is: how can we make it 1)interesting 2) accessible 3)easy to understand what the various tasks are 4)possible to spread the word about it? ... And this is where you come in the picture. We worked on a short survey that's anonymous (we don't require your name nor your email) and we would really like it if you could take a few minutes of your time to answer these questions. As you will see they are all about understanding how we could include users of LibreOffice and turn them into contributors. The survey is here: https://survey.documentfoundation.org/index.php/574531/lang-en We hope you're having a great time and thank you again for using LibreOffice! Best regards, I went to do the survey, didn't complete it. From going through the pages, too many places didn't allow me to provide feedback on my interests as well as concerns before becoming involved. On a couple of pages, I would like to have selected more than one. IMO, surveys such as this are essentially slanted, and could give you the answers you want to hear, not the ones you should hear. Lastly, after clicking the Exit and Clear survey button, in the following window, the close this window button did not work, even in Safe Mode for Firefox. I agree about the survey. The multiple-choice type answers did not reflect my answers. However, I had no trouble closing the window without completing the survey. -- Dale Erwin Jr. 28 de Julio 657, Depto. 03 Magdalena del Mar, Lima 17 PERU http://leather.casaerwin.org -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
