From: Maximilian Odendahl on

> I really think a code rewrite inevitable if we want to keep OOo competitive.

are you actually being serious? Certain parts definitely, but certainly
not everything.

As a rough estimate, see this from ohloh:


This calculator estimates how much it would cost to hire a team to write
this project from scratch:

Codebase 23,800,077
Effort (est.) 7676 Person Years
Avg. Salary $ 55.000 year

$ 422,159,217

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From: Andreas Saeger on
Did you ever use OpenOffice.org? Do you really know the software or are
you just another cross-posting troll?


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From: Michael Adams on
On Wednesday 24 March 2010 11:14, Miroslav Mazel wrote:
> 1. *The UI*
> The UI is the single most important aspect of any piece of software. That's
> how Apple makes its money: its products aren't feature packed and its
> competitors usually already have the features its products have, but
> Apple's hardware and software are really intuitive and comfortable to use.
You have no conclusions from this observation - if you are an Apple Fanboy,
fine, but what were you expecting us to absorb from their strategy.

> The Renaissance project is shaping up really well. We need to get as many
> people as possible to test it, to provide feedback, and to look into more
> things we could do with the UI to make it more intuitive.
Ah - the look like Office 2007 team.

> 2. *The look*
> Self-explanatory.
Is part of the Graphical UI. Do you like it or not? I fail to see the purpose
of raising this as an item in your list unless you tell us what you mean.

> 3. *The "feel"/the code*
> OOo is infamous for being bloated. It's a famed memory and resource hog. So
> here are a few streamlining suggestions:
> a) Make secondary things into extensions. Take Google Chrome: it has put
> basic things like the RSS feed indicator into extensions. I think we should
> do a similar thing, but keep some of these basic extensions bundled in
> OOo (but they would now be easily removable). A few things which could be
> made into extensions: Wizards, templates, Gallery, Media player, Navigator,
> Language tools, Collaboration tools, Help files, etc.
I don't really get your point here at all. You start slamming memory and
resource usage, then providing a list of things, of which many only get
loaded into memory when called upon anyway. What part of the help files is
running before it has been requested by the user?

> b) Use bits of the same code across the suite. (It's very peculiar that
> some things, like shapes or tables, don't work exactly the same way across
> all the applications, or that things like the zoom slider end up in one
> application several releases before another.)
+1

> 4. *The website*
> The website holds the key to all of these, because that's where we get both
> volunteers and customers. The website needs to be completely rethought,
> from the ground up. The homepage needs a big, bright, warm download button
> and needs to be more resolution-independent and colorful (judging by the
> Feng-GUI heat map, where the OOo logo is the most distinctive part of the
> page) in general.

It just was. Where was your input into that process?

> The whole site needs to be recategorized and made
> browseable. All things related to projects (resources, mailing lists,
> links, wiki pages, ...) need to be collected into one lucid, readable,
> well-categorized project hub. Text needs to be drastically cut short,
> projects and mailing lists that have been broken up into so many parts need
> to be merged, and the new user routine has to be seriously simplified.
> Seriously, there is just so much unnecessary complexity on the site right
> now. And there needs to be an IdeaTorrent page, to provide a simple way to
> collect ideas from people (because the current idea submission procedure is
> too complicated and ineffective).
>
> That's it. Of course, there are still problems like compatibility and
> feature parity with Office to tackle, but I'd say those are secondary
> (we've got the major compatibility problems solved, I think).
Trying to achieve feature parity with a competitor only ever makes a product a
copycat, not an innovative leader. That is why the renaissance project GUI
should be offered as an addon only. I have it on good authority that people
are resistant to change. The Office ribbon is one thing that has cause a lot
of grief to customers with a good grasp on the traditional layout, This
results in reduced output (how temporary this is, is debatable). No changes
should be made without someone offering training. Where are the resources you
propose for the training.

Changing a work site from Office 2003 to OO.o instead of Office 2007 was an
opportunity that was mostly missed. Even then, training needs to be taken
into the mix. I have heard of several half baked attempts to do just this
that failed.

> I'm only concerned about the speed we accomplish this with: things have
> been moving pretty slowly around here, or so it seems.
>
> I think we could do things a lot faster with a website refresh. That's the
> thing we want to do first, because it'll get us more contributors. I'd
> especially appreciate the IdeaTorrent page.
>
> I'm also a bit concerned about online editing (with rising internet usage
> and speeds, as well as the game-changing, web app-only Chrome OS), but I've
> talked about that before...

I hope you feel better after your rant. I do however see a lot of finger
pointing without much practical help offered.

--
Michael

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From: Bianca Gibson on
I quite like the UI how it is. A supposedly more intuitive UI, MS
office 07 drove me away. It's easy for basic things, but as soon as
you go more complex it gets much harder. I'd rather keep a more
traditional interface, with a slightly steeper learning curve for
newcomers, that is in the long term easier. The only problem I have
with open office is the lack of both X and Y error bars on graphs!
There is one but not the other, and I need both for my physics
reports. This makes me do most of my reports on my linux box(my
preferred work station) running open office, then use someone else's
windows machine running MS office to finish it off.

On 26 March 2010 07:03, Michael Adams <mbadams(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 March 2010 11:14, Miroslav Mazel wrote:
>> 1. *The UI*
>> The UI is the single most important aspect of any piece of software. That's
>> how Apple makes its money: its products aren't feature packed and its
>> competitors usually already have the features its products have, but
>> Apple's hardware and software are really intuitive and comfortable to use.
> You have no conclusions from this observation - if you are an Apple Fanboy,
> fine, but what were you expecting us to absorb from their strategy.
>
>> The Renaissance project is shaping up really well. We need to get as many
>> people as possible to test it, to provide feedback, and to look into more
>> things we could do with the UI to make it more intuitive.
> Ah - the look like Office 2007 team.
>
>> 2. *The look*
>> Self-explanatory.
> Is part of the Graphical UI. Do you like it or not? I fail to see the purpose
> of raising this as an item in your list unless you tell us what you mean.
>
>> 3. *The "feel"/the code*
>> OOo is infamous for being bloated. It's a famed memory and resource hog. So
>> here are a few streamlining suggestions:
>> a) Make secondary things into extensions. Take Google Chrome: it has put
>> basic things like the RSS feed indicator into extensions. I think we should
>> do a similar thing, but keep some of these basic extensions bundled in
>> OOo (but they would now be easily removable). A few things which could be
>> made into extensions: Wizards, templates, Gallery, Media player, Navigator,
>> Language tools, Collaboration tools, Help files, etc.
> I don't really get your point here at all. You start slamming memory and
> resource usage, then providing a list of things, of which many only get
> loaded into memory when called upon anyway. What part of the help files is
> running before it has been requested by the user?
>
>> b) Use bits of the same code across the suite. (It's very peculiar that
>> some things, like shapes or tables, don't work exactly the same way across
>> all the applications, or that things like the zoom slider end up in one
>> application several releases before another.)
> +1
>
>> 4. *The website*
>> The website holds the key to all of these, because that's where we get both
>> volunteers and customers. The website needs to be completely rethought,
>> from the ground up. The homepage needs a big, bright, warm download button
>> and needs to be more resolution-independent and colorful (judging by the
>> Feng-GUI heat map, where the OOo logo is the most distinctive part of the
>> page) in general.
>
> It just was. Where was your input into that process?
>
>> The whole site needs to be recategorized and made
>> browseable. All things related to projects (resources, mailing lists,
>> links, wiki pages, ...) need to be collected into one lucid, readable,
>> well-categorized project hub. Text needs to be drastically cut short,
>> projects and mailing lists that have been broken up into so many parts need
>> to be merged, and the new user routine has to be seriously simplified.
>> Seriously, there is just so much unnecessary complexity on the site right
>> now. And there needs to be an IdeaTorrent page, to provide a simple way to
>> collect ideas from people (because the current idea submission procedure is
>> too complicated and ineffective).
>>
>> That's it. Of course, there are still problems like compatibility and
>> feature parity with Office to tackle, but I'd say those are secondary
>> (we've got the major compatibility problems solved, I think).
> Trying to achieve feature parity with a competitor only ever makes a product a
> copycat, not an innovative leader. That is why the renaissance project GUI
> should be offered as an addon only. I have it on good authority that people
> are resistant to change. The Office ribbon is one thing that has cause a lot
> of grief to customers with a good grasp on the traditional layout, This
> results in reduced output (how temporary this is, is debatable). No changes
> should be made without someone offering training. Where are the resources you
> propose for the training.
>
> Changing a work site from Office 2003 to OO.o instead of Office 2007 was an
> opportunity that was mostly missed. Even then, training needs to be taken
> into the mix. I have heard of several half baked attempts to do just this
> that failed.
>
>> I'm only concerned about the speed we accomplish this with: things have
>> been moving pretty slowly around here, or so it seems.
>>
>> I think we could do things a lot faster with a website refresh. That's the
>> thing we want to do first, because it'll get us more contributors. I'd
>> especially appreciate the IdeaTorrent page.
>>
>> I'm also a bit concerned about online editing (with rising internet usage
>> and speeds, as well as the game-changing, web app-only Chrome OS), but I've
>> talked about that before...
>
> I hope you feel better after your rant. I do however see a lot of finger
> pointing without much practical help offered.
>
> --
> Michael
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: discuss-unsubscribe(a)openoffice.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: discuss-help(a)openoffice.org
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>

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From: Tomas Lanczos on
I am sorry to say that, but the graph construction interface is much
better on Gnumeric then on OOo Calc or MS Excel. I really like OOo and
using it everyday for production (text editing, drawing, database
maintenance) but I can't help myself, I really hate that wannabe excel
graph wizard of the Calc, for that reason I mostly use Gnumeric instead
of Calc. Yes, there are also x and y errorbars.

Have a nice day

Tomas

On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 16:39 +1100, Bianca Gibson wrote:
> I quite like the UI how it is. A supposedly more intuitive UI, MS
> office 07 drove me away. It's easy for basic things, but as soon as
> you go more complex it gets much harder. I'd rather keep a more
> traditional interface, with a slightly steeper learning curve for
> newcomers, that is in the long term easier. The only problem I have
> with open office is the lack of both X and Y error bars on graphs!
> There is one but not the other, and I need both for my physics
> reports. This makes me do most of my reports on my linux box(my
> preferred work station) running open office, then use someone else's
> windows machine running MS office to finish it off.
>
> On 26 March 2010 07:03, Michael Adams <mbadams(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 24 March 2010 11:14, Miroslav Mazel wrote:
> >> 1. *The UI*
> >> The UI is the single most important aspect of any piece of software. That's
> >> how Apple makes its money: its products aren't feature packed and its
> >> competitors usually already have the features its products have, but
> >> Apple's hardware and software are really intuitive and comfortable to use.
> > You have no conclusions from this observation - if you are an Apple Fanboy,
> > fine, but what were you expecting us to absorb from their strategy.
> >
> >> The Renaissance project is shaping up really well. We need to get as many
> >> people as possible to test it, to provide feedback, and to look into more
> >> things we could do with the UI to make it more intuitive.
> > Ah - the look like Office 2007 team.
> >
> >> 2. *The look*
> >> Self-explanatory.
> > Is part of the Graphical UI. Do you like it or not? I fail to see the purpose
> > of raising this as an item in your list unless you tell us what you mean.
> >
> >> 3. *The "feel"/the code*
> >> OOo is infamous for being bloated. It's a famed memory and resource hog. So
> >> here are a few streamlining suggestions:
> >> a) Make secondary things into extensions. Take Google Chrome: it has put
> >> basic things like the RSS feed indicator into extensions. I think we should
> >> do a similar thing, but keep some of these basic extensions bundled in
> >> OOo (but they would now be easily removable). A few things which could be
> >> made into extensions: Wizards, templates, Gallery, Media player, Navigator,
> >> Language tools, Collaboration tools, Help files, etc.
> > I don't really get your point here at all. You start slamming memory and
> > resource usage, then providing a list of things, of which many only get
> > loaded into memory when called upon anyway. What part of the help files is
> > running before it has been requested by the user?
> >
> >> b) Use bits of the same code across the suite. (It's very peculiar that
> >> some things, like shapes or tables, don't work exactly the same way across
> >> all the applications, or that things like the zoom slider end up in one
> >> application several releases before another.)
> > +1
> >
> >> 4. *The website*
> >> The website holds the key to all of these, because that's where we get both
> >> volunteers and customers. The website needs to be completely rethought,
> >> from the ground up. The homepage needs a big, bright, warm download button
> >> and needs to be more resolution-independent and colorful (judging by the
> >> Feng-GUI heat map, where the OOo logo is the most distinctive part of the
> >> page) in general.
> >
> > It just was. Where was your input into that process?
> >
> >> The whole site needs to be recategorized and made
> >> browseable. All things related to projects (resources, mailing lists,
> >> links, wiki pages, ...) need to be collected into one lucid, readable,
> >> well-categorized project hub. Text needs to be drastically cut short,
> >> projects and mailing lists that have been broken up into so many parts need
> >> to be merged, and the new user routine has to be seriously simplified.
> >> Seriously, there is just so much unnecessary complexity on the site right
> >> now. And there needs to be an IdeaTorrent page, to provide a simple way to
> >> collect ideas from people (because the current idea submission procedure is
> >> too complicated and ineffective).
> >>
> >> That's it. Of course, there are still problems like compatibility and
> >> feature parity with Office to tackle, but I'd say those are secondary
> >> (we've got the major compatibility problems solved, I think).
> > Trying to achieve feature parity with a competitor only ever makes a product a
> > copycat, not an innovative leader. That is why the renaissance project GUI
> > should be offered as an addon only. I have it on good authority that people
> > are resistant to change. The Office ribbon is one thing that has cause a lot
> > of grief to customers with a good grasp on the traditional layout, This
> > results in reduced output (how temporary this is, is debatable). No changes
> > should be made without someone offering training. Where are the resources you
> > propose for the training.
> >
> > Changing a work site from Office 2003 to OO.o instead of Office 2007 was an
> > opportunity that was mostly missed. Even then, training needs to be taken
> > into the mix. I have heard of several half baked attempts to do just this
> > that failed.
> >
> >> I'm only concerned about the speed we accomplish this with: things have
> >> been moving pretty slowly around here, or so it seems.
> >>
> >> I think we could do things a lot faster with a website refresh. That's the
> >> thing we want to do first, because it'll get us more contributors. I'd
> >> especially appreciate the IdeaTorrent page.
> >>
> >> I'm also a bit concerned about online editing (with rising internet usage
> >> and speeds, as well as the game-changing, web app-only Chrome OS), but I've
> >> talked about that before...
> >
> > I hope you feel better after your rant. I do however see a lot of finger
> > pointing without much practical help offered.
> >
> > --
> > Michael
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: discuss-unsubscribe(a)openoffice.org
> > For additional commands, e-mail: discuss-help(a)openoffice.org
> >
> >
>
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