Hi Everybody,
First let me say, "Great job everybody working on OpenOffice." It is
remarkable how good this application is. I wouldn't be bothering to make
these comments if I didn't think to was worth my time.
I'm new to OO so, like any new tool I start using, there is a learning
curve at the beginning. I'm sure in a few weeks of puzzling over this
wonderful tool I'll have forgotten all these initial frustrations. But
it's also a good time to record some of the problems a new user like me
encounters. So here goes...
THE OO HELP SYSTEM
I got a MS Word document from a friend with a list of names and phone
numbers. The document page has some centered text at the top followed by
a two column table. I'm planning to call each of these people and set an
appointment with each one so I decided to add a third column to the
right of the other two. This was no problem. I found in the tool bar a
nice clear icon that does just that. The problems started when I tried
to adjust the width of each column. Suddenly the whole table jumped to a
new page leaving the three line header on the first page by itself. Now
I'm sure I'll eventually master this problem but I want to comment on my
attempts to find the answer to these issues in the OO help system and
perhaps suggest some areas where improvements could be made to help a
new user navigate the OO help.
1. HELP PAGES HAVE NO CONTEXT INDICATION
Since I'm pretty computer literate, I can usually use the index or
search features in a help system to quickly home in on the answers I
want. So the first thing I did was to go to the OO Help | Find tab. I
searched for "table" and in the results I clicked on the first item
"Table". This displayed a page with the header "Table". As I started
reading the page I realized that it is talking about database tables,
not a table in a word processing document.
At this point I began to suspect that, while I'm pretty sure all the
pages exist in some kind of hierarchy, this structure is not visible on
any particular page. I took another look at the search results and
discovered that there are three "Table" entries, two "Tables" entries
and two "Table Design" entries. After looking at each of these pages I
came to the conclusion that there is no easy way to tell what part of OO
these pages are referring to. I'm quite sure that, once I'm conversant
with OO, it will be quite obvious but right now it isn't. That leads me
to my first suggestion
SUGGESTION 1: Give every page a hierarchical context. That is, if a page
about tables applies only to Write then its heading should be "Write
Table". If a page applies to all tools then it might start with
"General" or "Basic". If it applies to two of the tools then perhaps the
page could have two headers or their might be a text convention to
indicate this like "Write, Calc - Stuff".
2. ITEMS IN THE CONTENTS TAB ARE NOT VERY ORGANIZED
So after the adventure above I decided to go to the contents tab and get
more familiar with the overall organization of OO and the OO Help
System. Much to my surprise I couldn't find any general overview of OO
in the help system. It may be there but I haven't found it yet. That
leads me to...
SUGGESTION 2: The very first item in the help should be an introduction
or overview of OO. This overview should tell me how to best use the help
system and give me a road map to the whole suite of OO tools.
One question I haven't discovered the answer to is, what tools are in
the OO suite? I know about Write and Calc and Draw and the presentation
tool who's name I can't find in the help. (Oh, I just found it, three
layers deep; Impress". Why is the help for Draw and Impress lumped
together under "Presentations and Drawings"? ) What I haven't figured
out is if there is any kind of database included with OO. I do know that
it can link to external databases but I'm not absolutely sure there
isn't some kind of database built in. I did see a tool that lets me
define database tables but that could just be part of the external
database referencing system.
SUGGESTION 3: Each tool in the suite should have a single separate well
named entry in the help system at the root level of the help tree.
For example I clicked on the "Formulas" help item expecting to find
information about Calc formulas. Instead I was lead two layers down to
"Welcome to the oo Math Help". It seems to be a separate tool for
creating mathematical formulas that display Write documents but do not
execute.
CONCLUSION
I could go on but I'm not sure it would be useful. Perhaps I should
contact the documentation folks and actually contribute to that project.
If one of the people in that project reads this and thinks I can be
helpful, please contact me. Meanwhile, I'll see if I can find them myself.
Peace, Love, Laughter,
Rob:-]
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