Greetings All,
I’ve read w/ interest all the ensuing postings engendered, both by the
original problem of a woman’s daughter’s essay, created using OOo software,
being turned into textural gibberish when an attempt was made to save it as
a document, & my short, general commentary on this problem as being
symptomatic of flaws inherent in the present OOo office suite. First, let
me state that, pointing out that flaws exist in any product, isn’t at all
equivalent to saying that said product is w/o value. Next, let me stand
corrected on my erroneous use of the term “hashtag,” as was pointed out by
an observant member of this community. (Instead of alluding to a text file
purportedly turned into “hashtags,” I should, perhaps, have referred to that
file being turned into a “fondue of un-interpretable symbols.” (FoUIS
?)—among these symbols there being visible many hash marks (#).) Finally,
let me state, as succinctly as I’m able to, what the purpose in of my
previous posting was.
I’ve encountered numerous problems w/ my use of OOo software,
principally the Writer word-processor. I recognize that some of my
difficulties arose from my total unfamiliarly at the outset w/ the OOo
product in question. Being a really “old-timer,” who grew up on technical
instruction manuals & user guides, all of which were available in print
form, I, early in the game, bought ALL the guides to OOo software that were
available on Amazon. I found, however, that I could NOT resolve many of the
problems I encountered w/ OOo by consulting this documentation. Hence my
previous statement asserting that OOo documentation is meager & inadequate.
(I will stand by that!) Furthermore, from my installed OOo office suite, I’ve
never been able to get online help while I’m working, since my installed OOo
software cannot connect to the Internet. (Moreover, for this reason, I
cannot install updates to my OOo software.) Years ago, when I first
installed (via the official OpenOffice web site) the OOo suite, this
Internet connection didn’t work, nor did it work when I reinstalled the OOo
suite on several other occasions, in hopes of correcting this problem. (Now
a functioning Internet connection certainly might be something that could be
fixed, if only I knew enough about OOo to turn this service on. Or it may,
indeed, be indication of a bug in my OOo software AS IT INTERACTS W/ MY
WINDOWS 7 OS on my particular HP laptop. I’ve really no idea, but I’ve more
& more come to believe my “bug hypothesis.”)
Consequently, I turned to two of these OOo email “forums” to see if I
could, perhaps, get some help w/ my particular problems from other, more
experienced OOo users. I watched the traffic on these OOo sites for more
than 2 years w/o posting anything, hoping to learn more about how people
were using the OOo software, how queries for help were addressed by other
members of the community, & how to pose such queries for help myself. I’ve
learned much of interest about OOo during my past silent sojourn in these
email forums, but, unfortunately, not much that I learned helped me become
more proficient in actually using OOo to accomplish my personal projects.
It would be of little purpose for me to give the reasons for this, as I’m
sure it’d only cause more vituperative cries of “Troll!, Troll!” to be sent
in my direction.
So on to my main point. What I did observe from following the
conversations carried on in these email forums, & attempted to comment on in
my previous postings, was that many of the problems OOo software users
reported in the past strongly suggest the presence of flaws in that software
package. I’m a software user, not (at this time in my life) a software
developer, so I certainly can’t pinpoint where these bugs occur within the
extensive OOo code package & how to debug this code. However, ordinary
users of the OOo software, doing ordinary things w/ that software, have been
regularly posting “field reports” of problems that are symptomatic of
software bugs. And these field reports don’t seem to be taken seriously &
tracked down by any but a v. small cadre of OOo proponents. These few do
seem genuinely interested in improving the OOo software, but their number is
too few, & the time they have available is too limited, for addressing all
the OOo software issues that these email forums seem to raise.
Many, other than these few, seem to attribute most, or all, user
problems to either stupidity or ineptitude (or both) on the part of the user
w/ the problem. Software bugs as a cause of user problems never seems to be
a consideration to these individuals. I should point out that this position
is refuted by many of the very postings on this forum. When OOo
transitioned from version 3 to version 4 in the immediate past, their were
many postings from long-time & experienced OOo users complaining of things
like missing, inaccessible, or corrupted files. Or else, reports of
procedures that worked w/ OOo vers. 3 that no longer worked once they
installed vers. 4. That was all due coding problems w/o doubt—these
long-term & experienced users didn’t suddenly become stupid &/or inept.
What should be done & what will be done about bugs in OOo software certainly
isn’t up to me. But what is done, or not done, w/ OOo software will
determine the future prosperity, or the future decline, of the OOo office
suite.
BTW, my use of the “cyber-cliché” “imho” in my postings has been an
attempt at humor rather than of sarcasm. It’d be a shame, indeed, if being
a good-natured guy would serve only to bring the wrath of the present OOo
“community” down on his head.
Best wishes,
Anthony J. Rudgers
Orlando, FL U.S.A.
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith N. McKenna
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 6:30 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: All essay text turned to hashtags--commentary
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Anthony J. Rudgers wrote:
Greetings All!
The present "hashtag" problem is is symptomatic of the entire OO
software suite. An ordinary user of OO, doing ordinary things w/ a
word processor or other office-suite software, suddenly gets
something that is really screwy, & doesn't know what to do to fix
it. Much of their production gets lost, or else, they spend a lot
of time attempting to get their WP document or spreadsheet the way
they want it by trying again & again to get around built-in or
default features (or bugs!) of OO that they don't understand or
know how to modify (& OO documentation, as I have found, is meager
& inadequate). Unless you're a long-time & dedicated user, the OO
suite never seems to do quite what you'd like it to do & you
usually can't figure out how to fix things ON YOUR OWN COMPUTER W/
YOUR EXISTING SOFTWARE. One has to have the ability to fix things
quickly on their own w/o "going to the experts" every time a
problem w/ OO arises! For the casual user, the OO product appears
flawed. People who use any software product want to spend their
time & creativity on what they are developing, rather than spending
time & effort on issues associated w/ the tool they are using to
develop it. OO office software needs much effort to make it more
efficient, largely error-free, & much more user friendly.
Beat wishes,
Anthony J. Rudgers Orlando, FL U.S.A.
Mr. Rudgers;
Though your criticism bears much truth I feel it over emphasizes
certain aspects. Many of the support questions that are seen here and
on the forums are in the ways that AOO differs from other software of
the same type.
Most of my 20+ years in industry were spent in doing direct support
and I know from experience that many "ordinary users" frequntly do not
even bother to consult the help resources that are available or just
complain that it does not work like xyz did.
This particular problem is one that is very difficult to track down
because it happens so infrequently that it is difficult for QA and
developers to replicate.
You say that documentation is meager and inadequate. I would direct
you to
https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/OOo3.3_User_Guide_Chapters.
Though these are for Version 3.3 much of the information they contain
is relevant to later versions, including version 4.0.1. Also available
is a getting started guide for version 3.4 from
http://www.odfauthors.org/apache-openoffice/english/user-guides/getting-started-3.4/published.
There is an ongoing documentation effort to create up to date
documentation for Version 4 and beyond on the wiki. We are always
looking for volunteers to help with this effort and could use your
knowledge and skills in this effort. More information can be found at
our orientation page at
http://openoffice.apache.org/orientation/intro-doc.html.
All software is imperfect and has bugs. The only way any software
product to improve is open and honest dialog between all parties. This
is specially true for Open Source Software. Honest discussion on
venues such as this and clear reports of possible bugs in the projects
Bugzilla tracking system at https://issues.apache.org/ooo/ are ways
that all users can help make this a better product. The QA volunteers
have provided excellent hints for creating good bug reports in
Bugzilla at https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/QA/HowToFileIssue.
Regards
Keith N. McKenna
-----Original Message----- From: Gary Frost Sent: Saturday, January
04, 2014 8:26 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: All
essay text turned to hashtags
Maybe, I'm an anomaly here, but I've never had any of these issues
at all. Generally, I work on a MacBook Air with the current up to
date OS. I do also create PDFs so that I can work on documents on
my iPhone in Pages. Using the iPhone is usefully for last minute
work for me.
I've thought about good version options for other iOS devices such
as the iPad Air which I intend to purchase. I work scrips and
other technical documents so it is essential for me to use best
practices to prevent loss of work.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 4, 2014, at 5:15 PM, Alan Cliffe
<[email protected]> wrote:
I don't know if it can be retrieved; for whatever it's worth,
I've had that happen too once or twice so now I always create a
PDF copy of everything I do in OO.
________________________________ From: natalie guttridge
<[email protected]> To:
"[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent:
Saturday, January 4, 2014 8:04 AM Subject: All essay text turned
to hashtags
Please help My daughter has written a 2000 word essay. She saved
it and then when she opened it again the whole text has turned
into hashtags...can anything be done? Regards Natalie
Sent from my iPad
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