On Oct 31, 2006, at 10:48, M. Henri Day wrote:
Dear Ross,
I agree with much of what you write. Still, to the degree that public
perception of OOo as bloated and slow is justified, I think these
problems
should be addressed in the course of development work on the programme
-
small is often beautiful, even if RAM costs are down !
I also would like to see a little less of the featureitis in OOo. But
Writer like
Word grows as people think of more and more things that they want to do
in their "word processor" that should be done via either a plug-in or
macro or
in a desktop publishing program. And there are others who want their
extra
features for the spreadsheet program like 3D animated graphic charts or
whatever.
As to OOo as an
alternative to Microsoft Office, I should like to see the former so
easy to
use, graphically attractive, and reliable that I could recommend it to
the
pensioners to whom I teach elementary computer knowledge. One problem,
of
course, is that Microsoft seems to be trying to make interoperability a
thing of the past by patenting its XML code, in order to lock us all
in to
its dear and insecure software with so-called «licenses» in which the
consumer has practically no rights at all over the purchased product.
It is a good alternative to MS Office. But MS Office isn't so easy or
graphically
attractive that I could recommend it to your target audience either!
MS will continue to do the "embrace and extend into propriatary" tango
as
long as governments and users let them. Anti-trust convictions don't
change
behavior when the penalty is to only promise not to do it again and the
government lets them do it again and again with only promises to not do
it
again as the penalty.
Still,
I can't help wondering if the real issue will not turn out to be the
choice
between computer-based alternatives like OOo, on the one hand, and
web-based
alternatives like Google's docs & spreadsheets, on the other. If I had
my
druthers I'd like to see a trend toward greater and greater
interoperability
between these two systems, so that a user could choose that which was
the
more convenient for him or her in any given situation....
Henri
The files should be to an open standard when available so that you as a
user have
the choice to use the file with an application on your computer or on
the web.
Ross
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