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Subject:Re: Spinoff: Using Linux for work? From:Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axion -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 17 Sep 2005 16:18:31 -0700
On Fri, 2005-09-16 at 22:49 -0700, Siliconwriter wrote:
> 8. Style Nazi. I am a firm believer in style sheets, and OpenOffice
> appears,
> as of now, to strongly enforce styles. I have only used the program
> for a
> few weeks, but so far it is not showing Word's tendency to let me easily
> (and inadvertently) override text formatted with a style sheet. This
> is a
> very important feature for me.
OpenOffice.org does have a few provisions for manual formatting, but
there's a lot of advanced features that require the use of styles. You
can also format the styles that OOo uses automatically, such as the
frames for different types of objects.
I should also mention the template system. In OOo, a document has only
one template, and is linked to a template but not dependent upon it. In
fact, if you choose, you can break the link to the template. Nor can you
update a template from an ordinary document; you have to deliberately
open the template. Because of these behaviors many of the problems with
templates you find in MS Word simply don't occur.
> 1. No variables. Okay, not many variables. I used variables as a
> substitute
> for conditional text in several documents, and when I imported/converted
> those documents all but one of the variables disappeared. OpenOffice
> then
> substituted that single variable's content for ALL the other
> variables it
> did not import. Thus when a phrase should have read "...how to program
> Product A..." it converted to "...how to program CompanyName...". Bad
> juju.
> Took me a while to fix. There seems to be a limit of only four user-
> defined
> variables available in OpenOffice; since I have seven that's going to
> make a
> headache for me. Not a big one, however, and not a show-stopper. If
> you have
> a document with LOTS of variables, this might be.
For some reason, OOo puts four user-defined variables into Files >
Properties. However, you can define as many as you like from Insert >
Fields > Other > Variables. So it's a case of poor UI design rather than
lack of features.
> 2. Very difficult to puzzle out how to format indices, tables of
> contents,
> and other generated lists. I've been working on this for two or three
> days
> now. The program definitely needs work in this area. It is, indeed,
> possible
> to format your index into a very professional looking format, but
> learning
> how is not very easy.
The clue for me was that all these items work the way that an index
would: there's a marker in the text, and the generated item. This is
quite confusing, especially for bibliographies, where the marker in the
text is the citation, such as (Jones, 1998). Once I warped my mind
around that, the concept was far easier for me.
The upside is that all these options are highly customizable.
> 3. Tables are more difficult to devise and format. It's not a big
> headache,
> just not intuitively obvious how to do it.
Version 2.0 improves tables a lot, adding features that should have been
there, and turning off the default for number recognition, which
automatically aligns numbers to the bottom right of a cell.
> 4. See Clippy above. In the Mac version, there's an annoying little help
> window that pops up sometimes in the lower right corner. I haven't
> seen it
> in the Windows version yet.
In case you haven't discovered it, Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org >
General lets you turn it off. It's called the Help Agent. Personally,
it's one of the first things I turn off.
> 5. Slightly sluggish performance, primarily in saving documents. The 105
> page user guide took 20 seconds to save; the 350 page novel took 45
> seconds.
> Doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. When sending files to the
> printer,
> there was a noticeable delay that locked up the Windows computer when
> sending to a networked printer. No such delay was apparent on the Mac
> with a
> networked printer. That may be a machine dependent glitch as the Mac
> is the
> more powerful machine.
I notice that most people who report slow performance generally have 128
megabytes or less. Things improve considerably when your RAM gets
higher. At one gigabyte, I can save 700 pages in about 10 seconds.
>
> 6. For Mac users only: There is no "native" MacOS version of
> OpenOffice.org
> currently available. However, I am running OpenOffice.org on X11 on
> MacOS
> 10.4 ("Tiger") on a PowerMac G4 and PowerBook G4, and am having no
> difficulties. If you are not comfortable using UNIX or X11, however,
> this
> may not be a good program for you to use. There is supposedly a native
> MacOS/Carbon version in the works, so you might want to wait for it
> to come
> out if you're really UNIX-phobic. I have not tested OpenOffice.org on
> Linux
> or UNIX yet, but the Windows XP version I am also using runs with no
> problem
> other than the slight performance issues discussed above.
There's also a fork from the main code called NeoOffice that runs
natively in OS X. I've not tried it, but I hear good things about it.
"When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp
right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is
not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result
is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending
to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it.'
- Mark Twain
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