Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 23:06 +0100, Ian bell wrote:
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
So the question is, Given that OpenOffice is supposed to be as compatible and familiar as possible for a MS Office user.
Says who?
I always thought the goal of the project was to be a OSS alternative to MS Office....
I agree; alternative not a copy.
If it wants to be that I always thought that as well as file compatibility it had to have a degree of familiarity about it.
It does have a 'degree' of familiarity as do most WP apps.
All
I am saying is that if Office 2007 takes off then it means two things
a. People don't care about massive changes to the UI as much as I thought
That IS a good point.
b. If OpenOffice wants to still look similar to MS Office (as it does currently) it will require a major interface overhaul (and not necessarily for the better)
Agreed but I don't think it does want to.
Alternatively OOo could take this opportunity to stop being a MS Office workalike and do something really innovative with the interface.
It is easy to bandy about words like innovative - much harder to do.
Define 'right'.
I am trying to be reasonably pragmatic about Office 2007 because it's unfamiliar and therefore naturally more difficult to use than the version I had previously. However I challenge you to do something relatively simple like print to a printer (other than your default) with the new interface (ok the keypress still works but pretend for the moment you don't know the keypress)
So it's really more a case of what Office does 'wrong' (defined as you don't like it) than OO being 'right'
Ian