Re: January meeting

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, ross wrote:

> > StarOffice is good for people coming from Windows environments. But what
> > annoys me about people coming from windows (heh, this will kick some dust
> > up ;) is that they expect everything to be windows-like,
> and why not.....it's what got the pc industry into the position it's in
> today. bill gates gave most people what they wanted (in between system
> crashes!)

I would disagree with that ;) Bill Gates gave people what they hadn't had
before. It's like being saved from a desert island by someone on a raft.
Just 'cos rafts work doesn't mean you can't build ships and take over the
'saving Robinson Crusoes' market...

> they are all surprised at the quality of the product but don't like the
> messing around to get it working just the way they want

This is true, but then the same can be said of new users to Windows. It's
all a UI thing, and pretty much all computers suck at it..

> WHY !!!!!! 'cos word works as soon as you install it!!!!!!

So does LyX. TeX has demonstrably fewer bugs than Word by orders of
magnitude - you won't find a piece of software with fewer bugs than TeX.

> configuring and printing from a text based program under linux is my
> idea of hell.....

Which text-based program are you talking about? I don't remember
mentioning one... I certainly don't use one.

> you have got to realise that most people want simplisity of use, post
> script quality printing and the like are for profesional publishers
> (they may be willing to put up with this type of unfriendly interface).
> if you insist on pushing people away by not providing a friendly
> interface, then IT development will move off in a different direction
> altogether.

You can't slate LyX for being complicated, it just isn't. It *IS*
different, but it is vastly simpler. People are willing to put effort into
learning new things: but generally, the effort has to be justified. LyX
justifies this effort by providing you with a simple way of creating
superb looking documents. Most users are afraid of learning new things
because in the past, the effort has not been rewarded ('here, have this
new copy of windows, it's got loads of new bugs....')

> IT should be a cutomer led enviroment.................

That only works in competitive environments ;))

Regards,

Al.

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