Walter Hildebrandt,
About two weeks ago I commented on the fact that your way of handling
Calc workbooks opening in seperate Windows leaves something to be
desired. I used Calc to do a single page edit on a school progress
report. Underlined headings, square block markers and text. Since I am
now porting to OpenOffice, I am on a learning curve and as I am used to,
I went into my do-read-do routine. This cannot be done, since the help
window will open over the workbook, but when you again click on the
workbook, the help window disappears. I knew to minimize the workbook
from previous experience and there it was. At first I decided not to
report on this since it seemed to me you found my comment negatively
critical and unpleasant, but something else which I think relates to the
philosophy of handling windows came up. I have a self-designed and
built program, which can, from a Design page on a worksheet - by
annotated drawings, accept the concept and design of a melamine kitchen,
then calculate all related activities like pricing, structures, billing,
orders, quotation pages, profit margins, cut lists and the like. Once
the design is complete I print all the forms. This beastie is about 6.9
MB in size, with about 20 worksheets, formatting that's afraid of
nothing and it has an alter ego about 7.5MB in size and about 22
worksheets for gate motors, comprehensive fencing needs, intercoms and
other security work.
After I opened, call it Kitchens, I wanted to open, call it Roads. The
reason being that on the Design page in Kitchens, I found a very old
version of the programming and to check on my own madness, I wanted to
cross reference. Kitchens opened well enough after some delay
understandably becasue it is convering from Excel. Roads opened
similarly, yet stuck somewhere before adapting row height in the
conversion process. Microsoft now has two similar automatic error
reports on this problem. In systems design, twenty seven years ago, we
were warned about this kind of conflict of similar programs needing to
address the same resources. In Assembler especially you had to be
careful not to overwrite your own househeeping. I did training with
Control data Institute on the Cyber 18. This is not bragging, you need
to know my reference framework. Besides your single workbook/window
setup being difficult to work with (when I am busy with a difficult
design task, I do not want the app in my face), it seems it simply does
not work.
Here are the detail of my computer's System Information.
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name XXXXXX
System Manufacturer FUJITSU SIEMENS
System Model D2190-A
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 1 GenuineIntel ~2660 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date FUJITSU SIEMENS // Phoenix Technologies Ltd. 5.00
R1.10.2190, 2005/04/07
SMBIOS Version 2.31
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180
(xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
User Name XXXXXX/Yyyyy
Time Zone South Africa Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 199.96 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 1.19 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
If Microsoft Office can handle it, why cannot you? It is past the point
already. I do not beef, criticize or comment lightly. I do not do so
without reason or in a negative frame of mind. I understand that one
cannot even appear to be cribbing the thing, copyright besides, but
there are too many other similar things between MS and OO, it is past
the point. Then again, it may be some philosophical decision in "Head
office" bedeviling you. This is wrong. It detracts from an otherwise
seemingly excellent product, which I however cannot get to use, never
mind assess in fairness.
As it is, with only your minimized recovery dialog and this e-mail
active (except 40 porcesses in Windows Task Manager), Speedfan says my
my CPU usage is 100% at 56degrees Celsius (132 Fahrenheit). In the
meanwhile the recovery dialog went down and now there is 1.5% usage at
57 Celsius because the fan slowed down.
This does not work, my computer normally does not work this hard. Now I
have to hand code a Kitchen against a deadline. How much money will I
lose through errors? Moot.
It beggars belief that you want to engender loyalty to open source.
Someone once said; "don't build if you don't have a good painter". It's
the small things. Only delivery counts.
Fix it and do not delay. Also do not tell me anything about "operator
porting" or learning curves. Sun Micro has been in contention with
Microsoft for years. You don't win it from the low ground. I am a
Commodore Amiga A500 user of about twenty years standing, but (forced by
circumstance) I had to reluctantly adapt my fiercely partisan stand in
the face of the excellent usability of Excel. The above mentioned
spreadsheets started life in ProCalc from a company in the UK. Sys Info
then was 4.7MHz, 3MB RAM, 40MB HDD, 4096 colors on the screen and a
mouse. The Workbench OS was loaded on a dedicated ROM. Daphne
programmable video chip, Fat Agnus Blitter (block image transfer at 4000
lines per second), Copper co-processor, programmable audio chip and
others. First true multi-tasking, multi-processing PC on the street in
South Africa in 1987. Could handle C, it's standing on the floor behind
me as I type. Must still look on the net for support, if any.
Thanx,
Chris.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
