[Gllug] Microsoft was distributing Ubuntu

[Rob Crowther]

Richard Jones wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 01, 2007 at 01:50:37PM +0100, John G Walker wrote:
>> On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 13:17:33 +0100 Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org>
>> wrote:
>>> (1) In the way that people typically use it (emailing "stacks" back
>>> and forth) you end up with loads of different versions with no
>>> versioning and no way to tell which is the latest version.  This is a
>>> general problem with Office docs.
>> User problem: If you're going to collectibvely prepare a presentation,
>> you next to establish a framework for how you pass things back and
>> forth. True of any medium you use.
> 
> This is something that the software could 'just do' for you.  Ordinary
> punters aren't too interested in "establish[ing] a framework" for
> collaborating.
> 
Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint IIRC) has an option on the file menu
"Send for review", which attaches the current document to an email.
When the document gets sent back and you click on the attachment in
Outlook it asks if you want to merge changes.  In theory anyway,
although I've been reminding people I work with about this for three
years they rarely remember to do it.  From what I understand MS had the
send for review action as default in Office 2002 but changed it due to
privacy concerns.

>>> (3) Slide format can't contain enough text.  Using multiple slides
>>> means that people have to remember the contents of slides across
>>> slides.
>> User problem: If you're putting large amounts of text onto a slide,
>> then you're doing it wrong, whatever means you use to prepare the
>> slide.
> 
> Well, the tool encourages a certain way to think and present.  Better
> tools, presumably, would encourage better ways to present.
> [...] 
> I happen to think that software can both make tasks easier and
> encourage certain styles of thinking.  This should be obvious: try
> collaboratively writing an encyclopedia using Excel, or forecasting
> annual sales using Mediawiki.
> 
Similarly, Powerpoint, or any other 'presentation' software, is not a
tool for preparing and communicating with large amounts of text, have a
handout and stick to bulletpoints on the slides.

Rob
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