Re: [tlug] The Great Mistake is thinking OOo is different [was: Why Vista Sucks]

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:21:36 +0900
tlug@example.com wrote:

> On Saturday 12 April 2008 13:55:24 SL Baur wrote:
> > (mainly secretaries with High School education and at best "Business"
> > degrees) document preparation with vi(1) and LaTeX(1) on BSD 4.2
> > Unix.  Guess what?  It was *working*.
> 
> Wow, that is very surprising and interesting!  I thought that secretaries of 
> that time used typewriters and generally disliked word processors (the 
> hardware kind) and computers.  Was such a thing widespread, or did you just 
> happen to know a very interesting group of secretaries? ;)

I know that it happens today too. When i started at the university
(2000/2001) it was known that the secretaries of the physics department
were using emacs and latex to write letters. I don't kow what they
do now, but i doubt they switched (those guys are very stuborn).

 
> > Suffice to say that Microsoft Word has all the flexibility of a granite
> > cliff when it comes to resizing documents. 
> 
> I occasionally receive resumes in DOC format.  (My initial instinct is to not 
> consider candidates who send Microsoft format resumes, but my colleagues 
> think that is a bit harsh.)  I get particularly annoyed when such documents 
> are in U.S. Letter format, which happens surprisingly often.  Resizing the 
> document to a standard paper size often results in very poor looking 
> documents, especially when the document contains tables!
> 
> Systems such as LaTeX have much better support for the resizing of documents, 
> but the truth is that many people insert special commands to optimize the 
> layout of text according to where it appears on the page, and such 
> special-case commands do not play well with document resizing either.

There is a reason why documents that you want to be read
should be in an unversialy supported display and/or print format.
Sending doc or odf is as bad as  sending a  tex file, you cannot
be sure that what is seen on the screen/paper is what you wanted
it to look like. Hence i'm surprised that so many people send
word documents around.

 
> > WSYiWYG is easily the most productivity pessimiser ever invented.
> 
> There are many who would say the same thing about computers in general.

And most people who regularly work with computers know it to be true :-)

> Though I tend to dislike one button mice myself, I recognize their purpose for 
> other people.  I built my grandmother a computer so that she could easily 
> communicate with me while I am in Japan, and the mouse was a very unnatural 
> thing for her.  Two buttons and a scroll wheel was a constant cause of 
> confusion.  When Mac Minis came out, I replaced her computer with one of 
> those, and she much preferred the simple mouse.

You are not the first one with this experience. Once, long long
ago, when i was still a teenager (actualy just had my first
experience with computers in school a few weeks ago), i was in
a stationery shop that also had a few Macs (Performa 630 mostly
but also a few 450s, i don't remember whether they already had
some PPCs, System7 was state of the art back then). A man who
was looking at one of those caught my eyes. He seemed at a los
and because the i knew the people from the shop i asked whether
i could help him and show around those computers. So i showed him
a few things, how to use keyboard and mouse, how the finder works,
how to type in apple works etc pp. He looked very interested,
so i told him to try it himself. He grabed the mouse and tried to
use it like a steering wheel. Of course, the mouse just jumped left
and right, but the man seemed happy that the computer was doing something
and when called by his wife, he thanked me happily and walked away.
I was so surprised back then, that someone would missunderstand
the concept how to use a mouse that i couldnt say anything....


			Attila Kinali
-- 
Praised are the Fountains of Shelieth, the silver harp of the waters,
But blest in my name forever this stream that stanched my thirst!
                         -- Deed of Morred