Hi :) MS Office is only released about once every 3 years or thereabouts, sometimes every 4 years. LibreOffice typically has 2 new branches per year. There might be an argument for some sort of big generic book that is very vague and even so quickly becomes out-dated but i think the documentation that the team does produce is just about perfect. 1. A good general introduction to LO as a whole and to each individual app/major-module 2. Guides for each app/major-module showing off new features and with screen-shots
People do produce video's and how-tos for specific things and it would be nice to list them or even host them in a co-ordinated way rather than just scattered in individual people's personal channels in YouTube. However i think there would be an enormous amount of work involved in coordinating that and time is probably better spent on just continuing to be prolific and hoping that people can find stuff with google or YouTube searches. If you have a YouTube channel with a lot of LO (or even just OO) stuff then feel free to add a link to it in the section on the docs team's wiki page http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications or more precisely http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#Other_Documentation_and_Resources or feel free to add a link for someone else's channel if you find something even vaguely useful. If that section grows large enough then we can always put a link in there to redirect people to another dedicated sub-page. We could make a page such as http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/VideoTutorials and/or http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/HowTos but we would need waaay more than 1 or 2 for such pages. Around 10 might be a good start. Regards from Tom :) ----- Forwarded Message ----- >From: webmaster-Kracked_P_P <[email protected]> >To: [email protected] >Sent: Monday, 24 September 2012, 15:48 >Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS raised prices so people will now start >renting their office products instead > > >I keep hearing that 90% of the MSO users use less than 10% of MSO's package >features. >That is 90% of the Word users use less than 10% of its features, 905 of Excel >users use less that 10% of its features, etc., etc.. > >I remember seeing an advertisement for MS-Word in the late 90's stating that >there are over 1000 new features in Word alone for the next version of MSO. >That must have been either for MSO-98[?] or MSO-2000. > >Can you imagine how many features Word has now? Then try to think of how many >features you have ever use for Word or Writer [OOo and then LO] in the amount >of time that you have used either one. I doubt I have used too many myself >from Word 95 through Word-2003 and OOo Writer [1.x.x - 3.3.0] and LO [3.3.0 >RC2{or RC3?} till 3.5.6]. > >I think if LO tried to match all the features that Word/Excel/PowerPoint has >with Writer/Calc/Impress, it would make LO so bloated that people will not >want to use it. The last time I has MSO-2003 on the same system as LO/OOo, >Word took almost 2 minutes to completely start up to the point I could type in >anything while LO's Writer icon took less than 30 seconds on the same machine >to get Writer to the point where I could type in anything. I wonder what >MSO-2012 or MSO-2013 would take to start up to that point on the same system - >5 minutes? > >Look at all the drive space MSO and any major Adobe package takes in its >"default" installations. The last time I installed Photoshop it took over a >GB of drive space on my 120 GB laptop. Yes, now we have over 700 GB laptop >drives and 3 TB drives for desktops [I have a 1 TB and a 2TB internal and the >same with USB drives], but it still does not mean that a package should be so >bloated that it will take so much drive space for its installation. > >For my Ubuntu 10.04 desktop, I have internally a 1 TB drive and a 2 TB second >drive. The 2 TB drive has 185 GB free, while the 1 TB drive 221 GB free. The >2 TB drive is full of audio and video files and the 1 TB is for OS and all of >the other data, like all my digital photos since 2005. I have two matching >external drives [1 TB and a 2 TB] for a full backup of each drive. For me >EVERY package that takes more that it should in drive space is less space for >my own data that needs storage. I should backup my 2 laptops and the computer >I have hooked up to my HD-TV entertainment setup, BUT I do not have enough >space on my external backup drives for it to happen. > >SO >MSO [Word, Excel, PowerPoint] are bloated with mostly unused options that LO >should not even try to include. We need to keep it with the needed options >for the 90% "average" users and not for those that are in the last 10% or even >those in the last 1% or less users that do so complex work that the "average" >user could not figure out why this is being done or even how to do such a >thing even with the needed documentation. I remember seeing a 12 volume of 3 >inch thick book set [shrink wrapped together] that claimed to document all of >the options for Word 95 or Word 98[?]. It was in the 90's that I saw it on the >shelf of the biggest book store in the county. I do not think our >Documentation people would want to match that for each version line [3.3.x, >3.4.x, 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x, 3.8.x]. > > >On 09/24/2012 08:31 AM, Jay Lozier wrote: >> On 09/24/2012 06:11 AM, Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote: >>> On 18/09/12 20:38, Jay Lozier wrote: >>>> I suspect most users do not use much outside the common core features >>>> of any office suite (LO, AOO, MSO, etc) >>>> >>> You suspect correctly. In any organisation, home use etc, the usual >>> statistic is that 80% of users only use 20% of the functionality.... >>> (I'm a retired Systems Accountant and have seen that more or less in >>> most places I've worked, from a 2-man advertising agency to a couple >>> of large quoted companies...and MOST places don't use VBA or Macros at >>> all, which is the usual excuse for keeping MS and not moving to OO/LO...) >>> >> Gordon, >> >> +1 >> >> Most features one needs have been include in office suites since the >> some time in the 90's. I can not think of a feature that I want see >> implemented that is not already implemented. I can remember when spell >> checking was the user looking up the word in a dead tree dictionary. So >> the problem with commercial suites is how to get users to buy a new >> version when the current version is probably overkill. >> >> My observations on macros are: >> >> 1. most people do not know any programming and do not wish to learn any >> programming. More accurately, they will not learn any programming. Thus >> they will never write their own macro and will only use macros provided, >> if any. Since the macros they use are canned, they would only notice >> differences in "look and feel" not in the actual code and would only >> care that the macro worked. >> >> 2. those who can write macros are mostly not professional programmers >> but users who probably learned programming elsewhere. Many engineers and >> scientists probably fall into this category, they learned programming in >> college (my case Fortran and Pascal). Often, their macros were written >> for their purposes not because of some perceived business requirement. >> >> 3. the professional programmers who write macros probably know several >> languages so they should be able to learn another. Unless they are >> selling commercial products, they could be suite agnostic, e.g. they >> only want to know what the suite is (API's) and its macro language(s). I >> believe LO supports several different languages for scripting - I saw >> Python and JavaScript listed. >> >> My guess the group that complains the most about switching because of >> macros would be the second group because they only know a few languages >> at most (VBA and what they languages they learned as an undergraduate) >> and do not want to learn another since their primary function is not >> programming. >> >> When I was writing macros for MSO, I was firmly in the second category >> but I have migrated to a situation closer to the third category. >> >> Because macros are a potential malware vector, I believe macro execution >> requires more user interaction before a foreign macro will execute. >> Thus, I would consider other ways to implement macro functionality if I >> needed one for a large number of people in most situations. >> > > >-- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] >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 > > > > -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] 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
