Pierre ha scritto:
M Henri Day wrote:
2010/2/5 Pierre <[email protected]>
versions of Windows products. MS Office 2007 is installed on all of
them, as
is OOo, but I only use the latter (save when I'm helping people with
difficulties in using the former over the telephone). As many
computers are
purchased with MS Office installed, but presumably all instances of
OOo have
been installed by users, it might just possibly be the case that, on the
contrary, the proportion of OOo installations that actually are used is
higher than that for MS Office. None of us know, of course, but in any
event, the method employed in this study does provide a reliable way of
measuring whatever it is it measures, and will therefore be useful for
detecting trends. Let us hope that in the fullness of time, the other
users
in your office come around and increase the proportion of OOo users !...
Henri,
I get so frustrated by not being able put up a persuasive argument to
persuade our staff to change to FLOSS or OSS.
[CARE- RANT FOLLOWS]
However, I learnt a lesson last week when two new desktops were
installed in our office. We do a fair bit of minor photo editing,
usually no more than lifting a section of photo image of its background
and pasting it onto a different background. We may also do some basic
photo enhancing. The file is then saved as a tiff and emailed to a
manufacturer for some processing.
We'd been using Paintshop Pro to do this.
For how long ? Have you used also other programs or PSP exclusively ?
I persuaded the two workers who do this to try "The Gimp".
May I ask you how ? What did you tell them ? What were your arguments
for trying out The Gimp ? What did you "promise" them ?
Within minutes there was a snag and near mutiny. It wasn't so much the
Gimp itself that was the problem; it was the fact that there was no
context sensitive help to guide users on how to cut the section of
If I understand correctly:
- select the portion of the image you want to cut (e.g. use the
rectangle selection tool)
- edit -> copy
- edit -> paste as new image
or
- image -> crop to selection
image. It took me the best part of twenty minutes to track down the
You knew your collegues had to perform the cutting task, so why didn't
you try it on your own and track down the docs _before_ installing the
thing ?
relevant documentation. By that time my colleagues had thrown their
hands up in despair and insisted Paintshop Pro be installed.
This is not surprising.
I had this reaction even when my collegue showed me a task and I
immediately showed him how to do it in Gimp: he found it too difficult
to remember, and he hadn't enough motivation to start learning Gimp, so
he just kept using his usual program.
Sometimes good arguments are not enough, you also have to find the right
time to have people listen.
More to the point, if it took me some considerable time to identify how
to perform a fairly common and basic task in the Gimp, what chance the
user.
>
Sometimes the user has to be guided.
I've used OOo now for so many years that I find MS Word 2000 fairly
unintuitive. My collegues are instead used to MS Workd 2K so I have to
work hard to _slowly_ take them to migrate to OOo.
So while I agree that The Gimp is not the most user-friendly app out
there, maybe that "fairly common and basic task" seemed difficult to you
because you're used to PSP... (just guessing)
I have to conclude that therein is FLOSS's main handicap; the lack of
meaningful help files & system.
I understand you're ranting (it's happened to me too, so I know how one
feels when fighiting with poor docs), but this statement is total FUD.
It's as accurate as saying "all MS software is crap". Most of us have
said it sometime (or perhaps often), but we all know it's just
oversimplification.
Arguably OOo is better served in this area, but it has failings as well.
So does MS Office.
For example. After years of using OOo, to this day I cannot get outline
numbering to work. The instructions in the help system just do not work
for me. So, whenever I need to use outline and paragraph numbering I'm
back in MS-Word. It is just so much easier and more intuitive. Click
Outline View and there it is and it works. OOo just doesn't do that in
my experience.
You might be right, but you should definetly not give up that way.
Google hard for it or ask here!
[END OF RANT] and thanks for listening. I feel much better now. :D
I think the lesson here is twofold:
1) before showing a new program to someone, be sure to know it well, or
at least to know well the functions you want to show in that particular
situation;
2) persuading someone to change habits is very hard; when "habit" means
"I'm used to click there, there, and there and I've got my work done"
the job becomes virtually impossibile; so you have to be _very_ prepared
to answer the tipical question: that task in my usual software is done
so and so, how do I do it in the new one ? If the motivation to try a
new software is not coming from the user herself, she won't be very
patient when encountering difficulties, so you have to ease the learning
curve yourself;
Thanks for ranting publicly :-) I think your feelings are shared by many
(I event felt quite the same sometimes when I first tried FOSS software
years ago), so discussing them here might be helpful.
Marcello
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