On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 22:07 -0400, Paul_B wrote: > On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 20:08:53 -0400, G. Roderick Singleton wrote: > > >> This is not directed at you. I appreciate your trying to help. > >> But I'm finding that almost every time I try to dive into > >> something with OO I get stymied. It's fine for basic functions, > >> but for advanced things it's logic is very much unintuitive. I > >> was up and running with mail merge in Word in ten minutes; it > >> took me about 2 hours in OO. Macros I still haven't gotten to > >> first base with. Frames are not documented. > > > > May I suggest that you have a look at the 1.1.x User Guide > > ( http://tinyurl.com/8zlay ) and/or the 2.0 User Guide > > (http://tinyurl.com/bwfrp) both have lots on frames. Plus on > > http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/index.html there are also > > all the OOoAuthors guides. Bound to be something on frames in these too. > > Lots on macros too. > > The 2.0 UGs have nothing on frames yet. It's promised. Guess I > need to check out the 1.1s. 2.0 guide page 91, page 170, page 171, page 295, page 386 which is what I found with a quick search.
> Maybe it's me, but I find the macro > language impossible, much more difficult than vba. BASIC is pretty much BASIC no matter which flavour. If you have specific problems let us know. > > > Then there are the other repositories at > > http://documentation.openoffice.org/ like the HOW-TOs and so on. I > > think by using these you might be able to get your head around frames. > > As to mail merge, I believe this is also documented in the guides while > > the on-line help could be considered a bit techie it is there too. 2.0 > > is still a work in progress so I do not know how mail merge will work > > at release time. However, I do know there is work being done to also > > have mail merge in 2.x work directly with email. > > I've been in them this week, and they were indeed helpful for the > likes of mail merge. It's just that I continually find myself in > conflict with the logic of OO's organization, its functions and > wizards, and that necessitates studying every step of the way for > each function, rather than a more smooth reliance on intuition. Intuition as what you learned from MSO? Not sure I understand, please explain in more detail. > > >> I'm not complaining, I'm stating. I need to get a handle on this > >> situation. I believe in OO. I would like to make MS irrelevant. I > >> would even pay for OO if it did the job. > > > > It does and that search on the main site doesn't work well enough to > > bring up what is on docs doesn't help you or others either. > > ( http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=52046 ) > > "It does"? Not following the logic of your answer here. Well OOo does do what a good office suite does. I think the rest of the sentence makes sense. > > >> This leaves me in a difficult situation. At present it's very > >> hard for me to grow into OO. But I do not want to go back to MS. > >> > > > > I have recognized that getting to existing docs can be a huge problem. > > That is one of the reasons I answer here even when I should be working > > on the 2.0 guide and setup guide and doc project admin stuff :-) so > > people can find something to help them get going. I would ask anyone who > > can to get on board docs and contribute where possible. > > I appreciate your work here and that of others. I think, however, > that I'm up against a very basic conflict with the writers of OO > about how to go about doing things. I hate to say it, but I > gravitate more toward the way Word97 is thought out. When I spend > half an hour trying to figure out how to automate mass changes to > a spelling list, and get nowhere using with spelling options, the > search and replace function, or macros, but then can figure out > how to do it intuitively in Word in 4 minutes - and when that is > typical of my attempts to get familiar with the somewhat more > advanced functions in OO - I've got a problem. > > p. Well I, personally, cannot do much about the conflict you are having without some input. I hear frustration but I and every other author of OOo documentation needs to get some idea of the problems users encounter before progress can be made. Thus, I ask you to write down where you run into problems in a step-by-step format so we have half a chance to update existing and any future documents. The user guide is http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=29679 to which you may add your comments and any text you would like to see included. -- PLEASE KEEP MESSAGES ON THE LIST. OpenOffice.org Documentation Co-Lead http://documentation.openoffice.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
