This is a post related to usability of Open Office Suite.
Open office has emerged has one of the best alternatives to MS Office (while Google Docs is still maturing)
There are few elemental things not available in Open Office which makes its use little more rough
Most important being, Inability to change slides with arrow keys . I don't understand why OO people are not implementing this simple feature. Is there a copyright issue or programming difficulty (?)
Second being, compatibility with MS Office 2007 files (esp. .pptx). With these formats being more than 3 yrs old, it should start supporting it fully.
Open Office 's saved ppt files change in orientation and design when opened in MS Office, not talking about templates (can be really troublesome).
Few more smaller issues.
Note: this post is not made for criticizing OO , rather it points out woes of users who want to shift their workspace in open source but are still facing difficulties.
Hi,
On 07/12/2010 09:12 PM, Pratik Anand wrote:
This is a post related to usability of Open Office Suite. [...snip...] There are few elemental things not available in Open Office which makes its use little more rough
Most important being, Inability to change slides with arrow keys . I don't understand why OO people are not implementing this simple feature. Is there a copyright issue or programming difficulty (?)
Not quite sure what you are speaking about here. Arrow key navigation to go previous/next (left/right arrow key) works for me with OO 3.1 on my Fedora 12 system, in slideshow mode. Is that what you were referring to ?
Second being, compatibility with MS Office 2007 files (esp. .pptx). With these formats being more than 3 yrs old, it should start supporting it fully.
Open Office 's saved ppt files change in orientation and design when opened in MS Office, not talking about templates (can be really troublesome).
If you could please point me to the complete documented specification for the format for the .pptx file, I'll make sure the good developers at OO.org implement all the features and interoperability you request.
Few more smaller issues.
Note: this post is not made for criticizing OO , rather it points out woes of users who want to shift their workspace in open source but are still facing difficulties.
One of my recommendations to those who start using OO is to use it on all platforms. OO on windows behaves pretty much the same as OO on linux. Also, secondly, although as an office suite OO is _similar_ to M$ Office, it is not the *same*. There is a learning curve to be productive in OO as there is in M$ Office. Spending sometime looking for documentation, especially something that points out differences[1] between the environments.
cheers, - steve [1] Quick google gave me these: http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/office_guides/microsoft_office_to_ope... (there is a section named General Differences In Use) http://documentation.openoffice.org/searchresults.html?cx=008361175193398611...
I have no clue how good they are though.
@steve
I am referring to the much-longed arrow key navigation in normal mode (not in presentation mode). Why to go for pgup/pgdown for it.
And, the design and orientation change issue, I am referring to, is not only limited to pptx but in office 2003 formats too.... What kind of document specification you want?
i have been involved in making more and more ppl in my college to use OO than going for pirated MS Office (or asking themm to shift to Linux because OO exists), So, these are some of the weak points of OO I have found myself. Once college gets open, I can give you a much bigger list based on large user experience. But I am not much worrying about it as OO ppl are doing an impressive job of improving the software but not implementing a simple feature which saves lots of time is a strange thing (read above).
On Tuesday 13 July 2010 05:24:27 Pratik Anand wrote:
@steve
I am referring to the much-longed arrow key navigation in normal mode (not in presentation mode). Why to go for pgup/pgdown for it.
And, the design and orientation change issue, I am referring to, is not only limited to pptx but in office 2003 formats too.... What kind of document specification you want?
M$office does not publish specifications without an NDA, which amongst other things claims Patent rights on all sorts of rubbish. When you read an expalnation of a patented technology (well actually anything abouta patented technology) you are debarred from implementing that technology and are liable to several times higher liabilities as a deliberate infringement. So think very carefully before reading an M$ spec - you will be barred from using your brians on those parts of the tech.
i have been involved in making more and more ppl in my college to use OO than going for pirated MS Office (or asking themm to shift to Linux because OO exists), So, these are some of the weak points of OO I have found myself. Once college gets open, I can give you a much bigger list based on large user experience. But I am not much worrying about it as OO ppl are doing an impressive job of improving the software but not implementing a simple feature which saves lots of time is a strange thing (read above).
Afaik you can simply reassign shortcut keys anyway.
Regarding imitation of M$ formatting, M$ has not been able to document their rubbish for doc files, even when faced with the ignominy of being discarded as a standard, on the grounds of ERRONEOUS and INSUFFICIENT DOCUMENTATION . Instead they choose to go on global manupilation and mud slinging spree (including calling Prof. Pathak of IIT biased). This after massive efforts by very many pragmatists to actually help M$ identify and ironout the shortcomings. As a final parting kick to all their supporters they have abandoned their own ECMA standard - no further improvements or bug fixes.
Moral of the story: never waste your resources on anything M$, your efforts will be relgated to the scrap heap.
As an aside there was this crazy announcement by M$ about a patented battery tech which can be plugged both ways. Ease of use they called it. Hope they stick to mucking about in software.
On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 5:24 AM, Pratik Anand pratik.preet@gmail.com wrote:
I am referring to the much-longed arrow key navigation in normal mode (not in presentation mode). Why to go for pgup/pgdown for it.
Since you're developer (python-twitter or something..), can you work on providing patches/workaround? Have you reported bug/s to OO.o people for this?
Since you're developer (python-twitter or something..), can you work on providing patches/workaround? Have you reported bug/s to OO.o people for this?
-- Kartik Mistry Debian GNU/Linux Developer IRC: kart_ | Identica: @kartikm -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
i decided to get the possible reasons first from the elite linux community first than suggesting it to the OO people. And, ,must say, I am getting other perspective too...
On 13-Jul-2010, at 1:02 AM, steve wrote:
Hi,
On 07/12/2010 09:12 PM, Pratik Anand wrote:
This is a post related to usability of Open Office Suite. [...snip...] There are few elemental things not available in Open Office which makes its use little more rough
Most important being, Inability to change slides with arrow keys . I don't understand why OO people are not implementing this simple feature. Is there a copyright issue or programming difficulty (?)
Not quite sure what you are speaking about here. Arrow key navigation to go previous/next (left/right arrow key) works for me with OO 3.1 on my Fedora 12 system, in slideshow mode. Is that what you were referring to ?
Using page up and page down buttons instead of arrow buttons is more sensible. I dont see why anyone will not want to use OO for this. In fact, the transition methodology on OO makes a lot of sense (I use only OO since i use a mac and dont intend to buy MS Office on mac).
- For slide show, both page up / down and arrow keys work - for Normal mode, arrow keys is to navigate within a slide (from one row to another and for horizontal movement) while page up and down is specifically for moving to the next slide. This way, you dont accidentally move to the next slide when all you meant to do was to go to the next line to change something.
I am surprised that you have not instead raised the point of having to use ";" instead of "," in formulae in spreadsheets which is probably the biggest grouse of people moving from msoffice to OO
Second being, compatibility with MS Office 2007 files (esp. .pptx). With these formats being more than 3 yrs old, it should start supporting it fully.
Open Office 's saved ppt files change in orientation and design when opened in MS Office, not talking about templates (can be really troublesome).
If you could please point me to the complete documented specification for the format for the .pptx file, I'll make sure the good developers at OO.org implement all the features and interoperability you request.
Except PPTx files, all other formats open properly in OO / MsOffice. The differences are mainly in tab / bulleted formats in Word files.
Few more smaller issues.
Note: this post is not made for criticizing OO , rather it points out woes of users who want to shift their workspace in open source but are still facing difficulties.
One of my recommendations to those who start using OO is to use it on all platforms. OO on windows behaves pretty much the same as OO on linux. Also, secondly, although as an office suite OO is _similar_ to M$ Office, it is not the *same*. There is a learning curve to be productive in OO as there is in M$ Office. Spending sometime looking for documentation, especially something that points out differences[1] between the environments.
cheers,
- steve
[1] Quick google gave me these: http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/office_guides/microsoft_office_to_ope... (there is a section named General Differences In Use) http://documentation.openoffice.org/searchresults.html?cx=008361175193398611...
I have no clue how good they are though.
random spiel: http://lonetwin.net/ what i'm stumbling into: http://lonetwin.stumbleupon.com/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
scrapo@saswatabanerjee.com wrote:
Using page up and page down buttons instead of arrow buttons is more
sensible. I dont see why anyone will not want to use OO for this. In fact, the transition methodology on OO makes a lot of sense (I use only OO since i use a mac and dont intend to buy MS Office on mac).
- For slide show, both page up / down and arrow keys work
- for Normal mode, arrow keys is to navigate within a slide (from one row
to another and for horizontal movement) while page up and down is specifically for moving to the next slide. This way, you dont accidentally move to the next slide when all you meant to do was to go to the next line to change something.
It should be straightforward. On down arrow; If user is on last position in current slide, move to next slide, else move to next line. Similar for up arrow.
On 19-Jul-2010, at 12:17 AM, Shamit Verma wrote:
scrapo@saswatabanerjee.com wrote:
Using page up and page down buttons instead of arrow buttons is more
sensible. I dont see why anyone will not want to use OO for this. In fact, the transition methodology on OO makes a lot of sense (I use only OO since i use a mac and dont intend to buy MS Office on mac).
- For slide show, both page up / down and arrow keys work
- for Normal mode, arrow keys is to navigate within a slide (from one row
to another and for horizontal movement) while page up and down is specifically for moving to the next slide. This way, you dont accidentally move to the next slide when all you meant to do was to go to the next line to change something.
It should be straightforward. On down arrow; If user is on last position in current slide, move to next slide, else move to next line. Similar for up arrow.
I dont think its a serious enough matter. If you know you have to use Page up / Down, so be it. What real difference does it make ?
We did a trial run of Open Source apps for 2 weeks with 40 users across multiple geographies that volunteered for it. And it were minor issues like these that made 34 of them not support it. Large amount of feedback was "Can not do X with Calc"/. In reality functionality X was available but not at the place where users expected. None of the users was from IT.
E.g. on Calc "I could not set Time series interval on X axis to week". Or "Individual formatting for multiple series on X axis does not work"
It is sad, but the fact is Exchange/SharePoint/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook is de-facto setup for most business with 2000 or more desktops. If migration to any tool "makes them think", most users would appose it.
On positive side, 27 users were happy with Writer.
I believe for small companies (100 or fewer users) , migration should be easier. Since they would not have Sharepoint+Exchange baggage. Sharepoint+Exchange makes end user's tasks easier, but makes it difficult to introduce something other then Outlook or Office.
OTOH, one large company (IBM) has decided to use open source stack as far as possible. Lets see how it goes.
When I started in IT, Lotus notes stack (Email/document management/IM) was de-facto standard. Now, it is Microsoft stack.
Hopefully in next 10 years it would be some open source stack.
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Saswata Banerjee & Associates < scrapo@saswatabanerjee.com> wrote:
On 19-Jul-2010, at 12:17 AM, Shamit Verma wrote:
scrapo@saswatabanerjee.com wrote:
Using page up and page down buttons instead of arrow buttons is more
sensible. I dont see why anyone will not want to use OO for this. In fact, the transition methodology on OO makes a lot of sense (I use
only
OO since i use a mac and dont intend to buy MS Office on mac).
- For slide show, both page up / down and arrow keys work
- for Normal mode, arrow keys is to navigate within a slide (from one
row
to another and for horizontal movement) while page up and down is specifically for moving to the next slide. This way, you dont accidentally move to the next slide when all you
meant
to do was to go to the next line to change something.
It should be straightforward. On down arrow; If user is on last position
in
current slide, move to next slide, else move to next line. Similar for up arrow.
I dont think its a serious enough matter. If you know you have to use Page up / Down, so be it. What real difference does it make ?
On Monday 19 July 2010 06:00:30 Shamit Verma wrote:
We did a trial run of Open Source apps for 2 weeks with 40 users across multiple geographies that volunteered for it. And it were minor issues like these that made 34 of them not support it. Large amount of feedback was "Can not do X with Calc"/. In reality functionality X was available but not at the place where users expected. None of the users was from IT.
I presume you never heard of "look and feel" lawsuits.
E.g. on Calc "I could not set Time series interval on X axis to week". Or "Individual formatting for multiple series on X axis does not work"
Excellent opportunity. write a macro for the customers that want some specific microsoftism.
It is sad, but the fact is Exchange/SharePoint/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook is de-facto setup for most business with 2000 or more desktops. If migration to any tool "makes them think", most users would appose it.
More opportunity - training.
On positive side, 27 users were happy with Writer.
I believe for small companies (100 or fewer users) , migration should be easier. Since they would not have Sharepoint+Exchange baggage. Sharepoint+Exchange makes end user's tasks easier, but makes it difficult to introduce something other then Outlook or Office.
That was the goal. And suckers that many users are, they have fallen for the trap. You can do little about it, until the user gets screwed by the usual M$isms.
OTOH, one large company (IBM) has decided to use open source stack as far as possible. Lets see how it goes.
When I started in IT, Lotus notes stack (Email/document management/IM) was de-facto standard. Now, it is Microsoft stack.
Hopefully in next 10 years it would be some open source stack.
You need to read a lot about the poltics of software tech, to avoid coming to a naive conclusion. Bottomline is that M$ users are in a deadly trap created by M$ and the esacpe involves both cost and effort. The longer you shy away from the hard decision, the higher the cost and effort. Further if you need innovative tech, closed systems are the last place you would want to be in.
On Monday 12 July 2010 09:12 PM, Pratik Anand wrote:
Second being, compatibility with MS Office 2007 files (esp. .pptx). With these formats being more than 3 yrs old, it should start supporting it fully.
Use OxygenOffice. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop/
It has support for saving in .*#@x format.
Select the correct package before downloading.
-
jtd -
Kartik Mistry -
Pratik Anand -
Rony -
Saswata Banerjee & Associates -
Shamit Verma -
steve