[Glastonbury] Re: Glastonbury Digest, Vol 71, Issue 3

[tim hall]

Last Wednesday 09 March 2005 13:47, info at wccl.co.uk was like:
> Er I haven't found OOffice living up to the standard of WordPerfect 8 and
> 11, not for what I need it to do and that may be the critical point. Don't
> forget I am only using WordPerfect occasionally, in vile Windows, when
> OOffice will not easily do what I want or is too much hassle to use.
>
> It may be OOf does everything I'd want except the reveal codes, if I had
> the time to spend hours trying to find out. It may be I need to pay for
> StarOffice to get something more fancy. My experience of OOf so far isn't
> that it's limited but that it's a bit antiquated in its approach - rather
> like going back to old WordPerfect 5.1 blue screen at times with all the
> demands in dialog boxes for figures to be entered where in WordP I'd just
> use the mouse and move stuff around "visually" or select from visually
> attractive dialog boxes.
>
> But another person may adore all that calculating, hate the mouse, hate not
> having control over the calculations (though they can be accessed in
> WordPerfect if you want them). Some people like doing sums.

Not me, I'll do almost _anything_ to avoid them.

> I don't! It's 
> one reason I don't want much to do with spreadsheets once formula are
> required. I would prefer to say "Look add that up" or "Look this is the
> sort of result I want, computer you work out how to do it please". You have
> to allow for these different attitudes and a complete lack of interest in
> some of us relating to some aspects of work and if an app makes it easier
> for me, all to the good. That's where WordPerfect/Corel has its genius- it
> suits me, it's visual, it's fun - and the manuals are excellent (ver
> visual). Word isn't fun, that's part of its problem. It's boring. OOf is
> between the two. I wouldn't revert from OpenOffice to WordPerfect 5.1 blue
> screen, you can be sure of that, nor even to the old WordPerfect for
> Windows 5.1 which was pretty dodgy but still a revelation after what we'd
> had before. Nothing so far has convinced me that OpenOffice is more fun to
> use or easier (for me) to use than WordPerfect 11 or even 8.

I assume you're familar with this:
http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/WordPerfect-Linux-FAQ/

It's obviously horses for courses. Having only used MSOffice and KOffice 
previously, I find OOffice by far the most straightforward. I have never had 
a good time with Corel products, I was put off by their bloated art packages 
and they completely lost my sympathy when they sold out.

I've been party to many of these discussions in the musical world, where it 
has been suggested that we put pressure on the makers of Cubase, Sibelius, 
Pro-tools, VST or whatever to release Linux versions. The thing is, these 
would be binary-only, non-free releases and none of us get to benefit from 
the source code, blah, blah. Personally I would rather support the 
development of packages such as Rosegarden, Ardour and LADSPA, whose authors 
have produced professional-standard free counterparts with accessible code 
and file-formats. If I have a problem with my MIDI editor or wish that it had 
some feature or other, I don't have to hopelessly wish I could get it to work 
under Linux, I simply write to the developers (Hi Rich ;-) and file a bug 
report or feature request. My experience has been that bugs get fixed within 
a week or so and most feature requests are either met or wildly exceeded 
within a year. Personally, I find that incredibly satisfying. -)

cheers,

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk