On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 22:43:13 -0400, G. Roderick Singleton wrote: >> 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. ...
> 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. Let me expand on two recent experiences. To help the OP with his spelling dic problem, I tried to enter a list of words after massaging it. I tried to capitalize each word via F&R. Couldn't do it, no Title case. I tried recording a macro, couldn't do it, menu function didn't record. Sounds right that "Basic is Basic", as you aver, but the spew I see when I record an OO macro makes working with it impossible for me, whereas with VBA I was a fairly proficient ameature. In any case, I was able to add the possessive to the words in a list via F&R. I then went to add it to a dic, to find out that I could not. Time spent, maybe 40 minutes. Result? Frustration. I go to Word 97. I click on spelling options/dictionaries/edit. I'm given the list in doc format, which I can work on with all the standard tools. I add the caps and possessives in about 6 minutes, save the file and I'm done. Then there's mail merge. In OO, I need to consult the Author's Guide constantly, and use painful trial and error to try to figure out what the dialog is asking, what the field shift arrows are all about, etc., etc.. I do get it up and running, after almost two hours. It still remains unintuitive, however, and I will have to wend my way through the process further times in order to become proficient with it. I go to Word. It takes me maybe 12 minutes, most of which is spent setting up a small trial database, to go through the MM process. I'm smoothly adding merge fields to the document from a toolbar which automatically popped up. The process completes with no errors. In these and other situations OO has chosen to needlessly complicate processes. Consequently, for me OO is a great basic program whose more advanced features, I'm sorry to say, remain inaccessible. Maybe that gives you an idea of the root of my frustration. Believe me, I want to like OO without qualifications. p. -- Using OOo 1.9.125 on Win XP sp2. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
