On 01/27/2009 07:14 AM, Jim Allan wrote: > NoOp wrote: >> >> As much as I hate to say this, I'd be *very* cautious about promoting >> OOo in those environments. And certainly not before understanding what >> is already in place in the way of forms used by those departments. Most >> municipalities, in particular fire, police, etc., have custom, or >> bought, designed forms in MS Word or other, that, at this time simply >> cannot be transfered over, or even reasonably used with OOo. A prime >> example is: >> >> See: >> http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=79720 >> [Protect Document but allow input field entry - MS Word to OOo] >> >> and it gets worse, as that leads to the long outstanding: >> http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=33737 >> [Allow for in-place editing of input field (turn off pop-up)] >> >> So, as much as I promote OOo, I can pretty well guarantee that you'll >> quickly lose the municipality form shoot out. Even if you were to >> completely redesign at form in OOo you'd lose; no clerk, police office, >> fireman et al would stand for not being able to simply click the box, or >> select from a dropdown,without the ability of having protected form >> sections, and the ability to tab between the form fields. > > There is NO problem with such features at all. This is pure FUDD. > > The problems mentioned only occur with attempts to use a Microsoft Word > form in OpenOffice.org Writer. The translation form will THEN use input > fields in translation and they are indeed clumsy. So don’t use these > input fields, except when for some reason you need a clumsy translation > between products.
I see... Perhaps you missed the entire point about departments/municipalities that already have MS Word designed forms. Had you read the post and the bug reports you would have clearly seen that this is what the post and bugs are about. It's also obvious that you've gone considerably above and beyond the standard 'fill in the form'. Well done. However, my point is that these municipalities/departments (most already facing financial issues) have predesigned forms in use. Had you bothered to read the bugs you will have found this link (from this mailing list as a matter of fact): http://www.nabble.com/Fill-in-fields-to11552629.html#a11552629 <quote> Our Police Department has over 200 templates done in Word. A template consists of headers and footers, some text and many fields that the user fills in. The document is protected, except for the fields that can be filled in by tabbing from field to field. They like the ability to tab from field to field to fill out the form easily. </quote> That poster's police department is still using MS Word because of the bugs mentioned. > > We've been using forms in OpenOffice.org at work now since version 1.1, > with none of the popups mentioned. We've been selecting from boxes, with > dropdowns. We have protected form sections. (Actually we just have a > normal protected backgrounds with active form objects sitting on top.) > We have the ability to tab between form fields. > > It is all there and it keeps being improved. > > Just select View → Form Controls. Clicking the icon in the upper > righthand corner turns the Design mode off and on. When Design mode is > on, the other objects become colored. Select one, and then draw it on > the screen in the method of all visually-oriented object languages. It > creates instances of the object selected which can be then modified. > > See the manual at > http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/userguide3/index.html and > check out chapter 15. > > Note that our forms are fully intelligent, using an external language > (Foxpro) to guide them. But it could be any computer language. Or I > might have been able to do it all through macros. But I had already set > up a system to do what I wanted using Visual FoxPro with Microsoft Word, > and I just replicated it when first working with OpenOffice.org Writer. > > For example, our production runsheets are 8½" × 11" sheets with a form > comprising 34 boxes in all, and containing check boxes, list boxes, > combo boxes, text boxes, and so forth. The file in current use is > automatically used as a source for the data, showing details from the > first and last record. Data is also extracted automatically from the > print program, provided there is a single print program in the current > folder. Information on the client is included based on what Docket the > current folder is under, and the data is extracted from our company > database. The form user is allowed to overwrite most fields or to select > from a number of options. > > Try creating and using forms in OpenOffice.org Writer before you > complain about defects that exists only if you restrict yourself to > clumsy imput fields instead of the proper form objects with which > OpenOffice.org provides you. > > Jim Allan Try convincing a police department to toss out their 200 MS Word templates and forms & hire you to come in and recreate all of their forms... --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
