On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:00:19 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> >> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
>> > 
>> > iTunes.
> 
>> Question: Are there any people on Earth who *voluntarily* use this??
> 
>   Apparently something like 50 million people do.

Arguably, the usage of the software may not be voluntary, but because it 
was included with their iPods, it's what they tend to use (as the default 
application).

Myself, I can't use it, so I use gnupod instead (since iTunes doesn't run 
on Linux, and Apple likes to believe Linux doesn't exist).

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (

Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it to 
talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart from Calc 
into Word based on a database query.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:00:04 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> I tried KOffice. It works, but it doesn't seem to *do* very much, and
> it's infuriatingly fiddly to operate. (Especially the spreadsheet. In
> fact, I've yet to find any spreadsheet that works as well as Excel -
> which is worrying, considering that Excel wasn't work fantastically.)

oocalc works very well, I find - I do a *lot* of data manipulation in my 
job, and I find that oocalc works as well as MS Excel - certainly well 
enough for the manipulations I do.  The recent expansion of the number of 
rows & columns really got rid of the last limitation I ran into (as I 
often deal with fairly large data sets).

My only complaint, in fact, about OpenOffice is that the database really 
isn't that useful - it's more of a front-end to bigger database engines 
(from MySQL to things like Oracle), but doesn't seem to work with MS 
Access databases (not that I need them that often, Jet is itself a pretty 
poor database engine, but it's handy for dealing with mid-size datasets 
where multiuser access isn't an important factor).

> I thought WordPerfect died about 20 years ago?

Um, no:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordperfect

WP Corp was bought by Novell and then sold to Corel a few years later.  
It's still in heavy use in some industries (such as being the preferred 
application of many people in the legal profession).

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it 
>> isn't. It just isn't great either.
> 
>   Why are you comparing a software which costs Big Money against a software
> which is completely *free*, and demand for them to be equal in quality and
> features?

Because I've yet to see any commercial offerings to compare to.

Personally, I use OpenOffice at home. It's good enough for what I want 
to do. But it's not fantastic - much as I'd like it to be some day...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Similarly, the one time I was actually in an Apple shop, they told me 
> about all the Apple software they could potentially sell me, "buy Apple 
> don't have an office suite. You'll have to use MS Office". And I'm like 
> "OMG, WTF? Doesn't that defeat the entire point of the Mac existing??" 
> And he was like "yeah, Apple haven't invested in making an office suite 
> yet."

  When did that happen? It either happened a decade ago, or the clerk was
really incompetent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWork (which, in fact, is
the successor to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleWorks which was first
developed in 1984).

> I won't argue with that. I've seen people say "hey, can I borrow the MS 
> Office CD so I can put it on my home PC?" "Well, er no, that would be 
> illegal copying. You'll have to *buy* a copy. Or you could use 
> OpenOffice; it's completely free." "Hmm, OK. Are you _sure_ I can't just 
> illegally copy MS Office? Nobody will know..."

  Most people don't see anything wrong in copying commercial software.
Not even if their attitude is put into doubt from a moral and ethical
point of view.

  What really grinds my gears with that kind of attitude is that it's
honest, paying customers who are paying for the software these people
are copying for free. These people may make up excuses in their minds
that they are just "stealing from a big rich company", when in fact what
they are doing is taking advantage of people who actually pay for the
software (and keep the "big rich company" alive).

  I buy software (mostly games, as everything else is open source), and
part of that money I have earned and use to buy this software goes into
paying for the people who steal the software. They are abusing *my* hard
earned money. And that pisses me off.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
> 
> Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it 
> to talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart from 
> Calc into Word based on a database query.

I might be wrong here, but... MS Office provides MS Access, which is a 
(low-powered) DB engine. IIRC, OpenOffice Calc isn't actually a DB 
engine, it is *only* a front-end. You still need to find a DB from 
somewhere, set it up and tell Calc how to talk to it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Thu, 13 May 2010 12:07:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
> 
> Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it
> to talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart from
> Calc into Word based on a database query.

True, that's not something I've ever needed to use, but then again, I 
probably wouldn't look to use a specific technology (COM) to accomplish 
the task, largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.

Jim

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> And *that* is exactly the invention that made Microsoft rich, right after 
> Digital Research showed them how to do it.  Write the OS that isn't bound to 
> a specific hardware configuration.

  Yeah, that's why Windows works only on PC's?

  If you want an OS which is really not bound to a hardware configuration,
try Linux or NetBSD. (NetBSD's motto is "of course it runs NetBSD!")

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it
>> isn't. It just isn't great either.
> 
> Well, I find it is actually pretty good - having used MS Office for 
> several years, I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (given 
> that it can import most MS Office documents that I've tried without any 
> issues at all, I'd say that's a pretty good way to tell how useful it is).

For example, I asked Calc to draw a graph, and spent forever trying to 
figure out how to add a secondary axis. As far as I can tell, they just 
haven't got around to implementing that feature yet.

I will say this: The chart options layout is superior to Excel. Far more 
logical grouping, options do what you'd actually expect them to do, etc.

>>> As I said, I use it *every* *single* *day* and it *isn't* awful, it's
>>> quite good, and I find it provides all the functionality that most end
>>> users need.
>> I used it to write my CV.
>>
>> All of them.
> 
> And?

Writer works for simple tasks. Sometimes it's quite frustrating trying 
to make it do what you want though. (I can't remember a specific example 
right now.)

>> As I say, I sometimes use OO for fixing broken MSO documents. (MSO
>> itself is apparently too stupid to do this.)
> 
> Indeed, I remember you mentioning that before.

Trouble is, it tended to chew up the formatting slightly. (I tried it 
with files that weren't corrupted; same issue. It ate the company logo, 
for example.) I imagine this is something they're probably working on 
improving.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:13:30 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
>> 
>> Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it
>> to talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart
>> from Calc into Word based on a database query.
> 
> I might be wrong here, but... MS Office provides MS Access, which is a
> (low-powered) DB engine. IIRC, OpenOffice Calc isn't actually a DB
> engine, it is *only* a front-end. You still need to find a DB from
> somewhere, set it up and tell Calc how to talk to it.

You mean oobase, surely - oocalc is a spreadsheet.

But I do agree that oobase isn't the best piece of software - I've used 
it quite a bit for accessing things like Oracle tables, and the setup 
could be a lot smoother.  Supports ODBC and JDBC, though, so that's 
something.

Jim

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