[Gllug] Voluntary work

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 09:14, Gordon Joly wrote:
> At 21:59 +0000 2003/11/13, Mike Brodbelt wrote:

> >That said, I have a lot of users
> >who generate PDF output, so I was hoping I could introduce them to
> >OpenOffice. It doesn't do hyperlinks in the PDFs though, so that went
> >out of the window :-(.
> 
> 
> But why? Surely some users would love PDF output without the hyperlinks???

Yes, but some want the hyperlinks. A tickbox for "add hyperlinks" would
have been fine. Total absence of hyperlink support isn't. To make it
worse, OO turns links blue, and they come out blue in the PDF, so people
expect them to work, but they don't.

> >To persuade companies to make the switch en
> >masse, open source has to produce better products. *Almost* all the
> >features of the Windows equivalent doesn't cut it.
> 
> The average user uses what percentage of the features of Microsoft 
> Word (say 97)? Any research been done?

Probably 10-15%. But some use more, and many use a different 10-15%.
There is enormous value in having a standard desktop in any
organisation, and until OO can replace MS Office for all the users, it's
not in the game. It doesn't have to make them all 100% happy, but they
all have to be able to do their jobs without significantly more effort
than before.

<snip>

> >start it by running a script from a terminal. I bought a new Mac laptop
> >for someone in my office recently. I installed OpenOffice on it. When
> >I'd finished, I gace up in disgust and went and paid 300+ quid for MS
> >Office for OS X. It wasn't even close to being viable for that user.
> 
> 
> Please come back here in 12 months and report on progress.

Oh, I will try again at some stage. Many users who've heard of this
great open source stuff however, who have the above as their first
experience, won't be back anytime soon. People say OpenOffice is a
viable replacement for MS Office, and right now, in a substantial number
of cases, it isn't. This does the image of OO no good at all. There are
of course plenty of cases where it is a viable replacement, but it's not
near the 100% solution yet.

> >As a tecnically proficient user, I can make nice noises over OpenOffice.
> >As someone whose job it is to provide useable systems to people whose
> >job is not playing with machines, I have to judge things on their (non
> >philosophical merits). It wasn't even close. On Windows (or linux) it's
> >much better, but it's a shame the open source community can't do a
> >better job at crossplatform support than MS.
> 
> Like I said above, maybe this will come later?

Before or after Longhorn ships? This isn't an unlimited time game.

> Openoffice.org scored for me on the HTML output, and also the PDF that you mentioned.
> 
> I am sold:-)

Good. But don't believe that because it satisfies your requirements (and
mine for that matter) that it's ready to replace MS Office on the desks
of large numbers of non technical people. OpenOffice 1.1 comes pretty
close, and I sincerely hope that by the time I move my office off Office
97 it'll be there, but it's not all the way there yet. Try doing a mail
merge in it sometime. MS Office has a substantially nicer interface
there, and office workers use that sort of stuff all the time.

Mike.


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