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Jim Henderson wrote:
> largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
With the help pages! :-) COM is the substrate that connects things together.
(I think I posted a link recently of someone showing how to use VBScript to
talk to a DB and put it into Excel, make a chart, and use the clipboard to
paste it into a word doc.)
Does OpenOffice actually have any sort of scripting built in, or interfaces
that you can drive externally?
--
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 20:17:22 +0100, Orchid XP v8 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.
>>
>> 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.
What do you mean by a "secondary axis"?
> 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.
That's one of the nice things about OSS development - when you reach a
critical mass of developers and get a good group of people who look at
user needs, you end up with software that can meet the needs of more
users and provide more options.
>>>> 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.)
There again, I don't have an issue with getting it to do what I want.
You may be running up against a learning curve (don't expect it to be
like MS Office, that's a starting point).
>>> 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.
What version have you used? Have you opened bugs on these issues?
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 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
Interestingly enough, Microsoft beat 1-2-3 by noticing that *most* people
didn't use the spreadsheet for calculations. They used it as a list editor.
MS added a whole bunch of list-manipulation operations, while 1-2-3 added a
whole bunch of sophisticated math stuff, and Excel won.
(Yes, yes, flame on for MS killing -1-2-3 with anticompetitiveness. That
isn't the point I'm making, even if it's true.)
--
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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Warp wrote:
> When did that happen?
Ah... 2005? Maybe? I'm not completely sure.
> It either happened a decade ago, or the clerk was
> really incompetent.
It was definitely after 2000.
> 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.
Yeah, I dislike illegally copying anything. Like, given the choice
between copying one of my dad's CDs or just buying one for myself, I'd
rather go buy myself one.
It still makes me slightly nervous that I have an illegal copy of
Borland TurboPascal 5.5 for DOS. I mean, as if Borland is going to
*care* any more...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 12:21:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
>
> With the help pages! :-) COM is the substrate that connects things
> together.
>
> (I think I posted a link recently of someone showing how to use VBScript
> to talk to a DB and put it into Excel, make a chart, and use the
> clipboard to paste it into a word doc.)
>
> Does OpenOffice actually have any sort of scripting built in, or
> interfaces that you can drive externally?
The go-oo implementation has a subset of VBA included in it (I understand
it's a fairly sizeable subset, but I've never needed to use it).
Jim
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:21:21 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 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 tried the spreadsheet from KOffice, Gnumeric, and OO Calc. I didn't
> really like any of them. Calc has improved a bit since then, but it's
> still a bit irritating to operate.
"irritating" how? In that "it's not Excel", or in that you couldn't
figure out the way to do specific things?
Jim
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>> 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.
*facepalm*
Yes, of course... :-$
> 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.
Oracle is a nice product, but if you just want to store your phonebook
or your CD collection, it's way way overkill. I will say one thing about
MS Access: It may be an utterly crap DB engine, but if all you want to
do is store and lookup a little bit of data, it's the most lightweight
thing I've seen. You get the DB engine and a nice front-end and a design
tool, all in one. It's not very *good*, but for small things it's
right-sized.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 12:23:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 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
>
> Interestingly enough, Microsoft beat 1-2-3 by noticing that *most*
> people didn't use the spreadsheet for calculations. They used it as a
> list editor. MS added a whole bunch of list-manipulation operations,
> while 1-2-3 added a whole bunch of sophisticated math stuff, and Excel
> won.
Yeah - that is interesting, but not surprising to me, either - 1-2-3 was
really geared towards usage as a number crunching tool (ala Visicalc),
but most users use it for list manipulation and other sorts of data
parsing (which is what I use it for, too). I do occasional math-related
stuff, but on balance, I'd say most of my use case is data manipulation
rather than calculation.
Jim
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> 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?
You're missing my point. The point is that if you build hardware, there's a
cost in factories and parts and labor for each and every piece you sell. The
cost of selling an additional copy of Windows is (at this point) entirely
born by the people pre-installing it. MS doesn't even have to press CDs for
most of their sales.
The point is not that it works on lots of different processors. The point is
that Microsoft managed to turn hardware into a commodity, which lowers the
price of hardware, which means more people can buy hardware, which means MS
can sell more operating systems at the expense (in profits) of the hardware
manufacturers who are competing with each other.
Nobody competes with Apple's hardware. Lots of people compete with Dell,
Gateway, HP, etc.
> 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!")
Hop in the way-back machine to when MS-DOS first came out. How many machines
running Z80's or 8080's were running CP/M compared to other operating
systems? How many 6502s were running AppleDOS vs something else? How many
TRS-80's could you run CP/M on? How many Vectors could you run TRS-DOS on?
--
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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>> largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
>
> With the help pages! :-) COM is the substrate that connects things
> together.
>
> (I think I posted a link recently of someone showing how to use VBScript
> to talk to a DB and put it into Excel, make a chart, and use the
> clipboard to paste it into a word doc.)
That sounds like the kind of thing that might occasionally be useful to
do... but I also don't know where to start.
> Does OpenOffice actually have any sort of scripting built in, or
> interfaces that you can drive externally?
I'm guessing JavaScript? (Or maybe even Java, of course...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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