Re: [Sheflug] Re: Open Office

[Will Newton <nospam [at] misconception.org.uk>]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Richard wrote:

> > And if the interface wasn't crap. (Sorry, I'm being charitable)

So, I contend that Star/Open Office has a horrible UI...

> No, don't gedit :)  I need most of the features in a good word
> processor complete with pictures and all else.  I nearly always use
> most of the features.  Went through a city & guilds office skills
> course to do that.  So, I don't understand what the problem is.  Why
> do I need to use a programming tool instead of an office suite which
> is what I really need ?

I don't see a logical flow here. I mentioned not one jot emacs, vi or
whatever else. I just said that Star Office had a crap UI, which IMO it
does. Very non-standard. Oh yeah, and it's word support is woeful.
Basically it outputs complete gibberish, Abiword doesn't do Word export
(I don't think I'll ever manage to make people realise "I want it in Word
format" is an ambiguous statement)

> I grew up in Sheffield where every kid understood that they might end
> up in the engineering industry.  In that place design of a tool for a

I grew up in Wakefield. Do go on.

> job is everything and always will be.  The whole of the local economy
> used to depend on that way of thinking.  The same applies to use of
> computers.  A specific tool is designed for a specific task and it is
> used for that task.  Emacs and vi weren't designed to produce nice
> finished documents that look like something that came out of MS
> Office.  And so, I don't use them for that purpose.  I don't have a

Well, "nice" is debatable. Excel does some pretty nifty graphs, and
PowerPoint is rather without competition in that field...

digression...
If anyone knows a tool that works like PowerPoint for Linux, do tell.

Word tends to leave you spending hours tweaking settings and never end up
with a consistent and smart looking document.

> use for MS software and so I use a well designed and well finished
> office suite that is produced for Linux and several other platforms.
> In fact, without the free software and open source public forum that
> Linux has produced some very nice and entirely useful office suites
> would never have been produced.  Star Office is one of those and works
> very well on some very slow machines which are about 400MHz in speed.

I can't stomach the UI, the features I would find useful (e.g. Word
export) don't work, and it's a memory hog and a half.

> One doesn't remove a car engine with a 28lb sledge hammer. One uses
> the appropriate tools :)

In my case one doesn't use Star Office either.


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