And lo on Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:17:07 -0000, Gilles Tran  
<gil### [at] agroparistechfr> did spake, saying:

> "Phil Cook" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> a écrit dans le message  
> de
> news: op.t7s2zm10c3xi7v@news.povray.org...
>
>> But do the people who don't use the solver or VBA have the option of
>> removing it from their installation? What features are deemed integral  
>> to
>> the programme? We've chastised Andy for not knowing about Styles in  
>> Word,
>> but how many home users do? Yet there the code sits taking up space,
>> poised for use.
>
> My point is only that one cannot claim that some features are useless  
> when they are actually used intensively by parts of the user base.

They're useless for a given value of uselessness, do I add this feature in  
that's used by 25% of our customer base as an installed feature or as an  
optional component? If it's plonked in as a base feature then 75% of  
customers will have it sitting there taking up space and never being used.

> Is MS supposed to make styles optional because Andy couldn't figure them  
> out? User
> requirements are real.

I'm using Firefox at times, I've added in an ad-blocker, flash blocker and  
session manager, plus a few other things that come with Opera as standard.  
Do I think Opera should make these optional - no because they integrate  
with the browser so well and the executable + main library stands at under  
3.2Kb. Now if it made Opera big and fat they'd yes they should be optional.

> Lots of people who are serious about using a word
> processor need styles and collaboration tools. Lots of people who are
> serious about using spreadsheets need automation. Lots of people who work
> with presentation software need to embed video.

Yes and am I saying those options shouldn't be there? No I'm not what I'm  
asking is does the program dynamically load in the "embed video" library  
when such an action is attempted or is it just loaded on principle?

> There's no denying that there's a bloat issue with many major  
> applications.
> Word 2003 had 31 toolbars and 1500 commands... Even Adobe plans a  
> thorough
> cleanup of the Photoshop interface.

But that's not bloat unless there's a duplication of actions; unless  
you're counting memory usage to display all the toolbars and menus.

> Still the solution is not to assume that
> "most users" are a bunch of dummies who don't need better than what was
> available in 1990. And about home users, my 75-year-old dad may not use
> styles, but he still enjoys Word's ability to work flawlessly with  
> bilingual
> documents with parts written in different character sets. Is he an
> exception? I don't think so.

No and I'm not saying users are dummies (ignorant perhaps), what is being  
said is that the core functionality of the program is being expanded at  
the expense of memory when the majority of users may not be using the  
majority of the functions.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Phil Cook escribió:
> Do I think Opera should make these optional - no because they 
> integrate with the browser so well and the executable + main library 
> stands at under 3.2Kb. Now if it made Opera big and fat they'd yes they 
> should be optional.

3.2Kb? Hello world is bigger than that on my machine... Nice 
optimization work the Opera guys did, huh :)

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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> a écrit dans le message de news: 
47d56173$1@news.povray.org...
> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:25:45 +0100, Gilles Tran wrote:

> Well, not for me they're not.  Not for most of the people I work with -
> and I work in an office that consists of both technical and non-technical
> people.  Most of my closest coworkers are not technical, but quite a few
> are.  It used to be the other way around - I almost never dealt with the
> non-technical people, being an IT person myself.

Well I'm in the feed industry, not an IT person and not knowing IT people 
(except to hire them...). I guess that folks who feed cows and pigs are 
special then ;) Not really kidding: it's an industry based on operational 
research, so crunching numbers is a normal way of life. Lots of these people 
actually live within Excel. Right now, we got a bunch of them downstairs 
being lectured about the joys of linear programming (and linear programming 
modelisation) and exporting data to and from MS Office and automating the 
whole processes. And they sure do know what they need.

> applications for the first Windows platform.  Everyone "had to have" the
> Windows environment for some reason, and WordPerfect and Lotus were late
> to the game *because* Microsoft didn't release the APIs externally (and
> changed some of them between beta and RTM, just to *really* fsck-up their
> competition).
> This is not conjecture on my part - this is well-documented fact.

And it doesn't change the fact that Lotus had become obsolete and that Excel 
was a superior product with features that people had been expecting (and not 
getting) from Lotus for a while. Here, Excel was the reason we switched 
gradually to Windows, not the other way round. It's not like Windows was 
actually useful for anything else back then. (I did play tic-tac-toe with 
Windows 1 though).

> department.  I've seen accounting spreadsheets that would make most
> people's heads hurt for days on end.

Oh I've seen that too, no arguing necessary. And the Comic Sans 
presentations too.

G.

-- 
*****************************
http://www.oyonale.com
*****************************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer images
- Posters

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And lo on Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:53:31 -0000, Nicolas Alvarez  
<nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> did spake, saying:

> Phil Cook escribió:
>> Do I think Opera should make these optional - no because they integrate  
>> with the browser so well and the executable + main library stands at  
>> under 3.2Kb. Now if it made Opera big and fat they'd yes they should be  
>> optional.
>
> 3.2Kb? Hello world is bigger than that on my machine... Nice  
> optimization work the Opera guys did, huh :)

Opera.exe 79,360 bytes
Opera.dll 3,276,288 bytes

K's M's what the difference... a magnitude of about 1000.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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"Phil Cook" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> a écrit dans le message de 
news: op.t7s7rzxyc3xi7v@news.povray.org...

> No and I'm not saying users are dummies (ignorant perhaps), what is being 
> said is that the core functionality of the program is being expanded at 
> the expense of memory when the majority of users may not be using the 
> majority of the functions.

The Excel solver is optional. And it's kind of annoying when you have to 
send a file to someone assuming it's installed when it's not... Ditto for 
any application that require plugins. Modular applications are nice but when 
one has to share documents (which is the norm in many working environments) 
it can be problematic. Also, the process itself of finding, adding and 
removing modules adds to the complexity (where's that friggin video library) 
and when software operation becomes dependent on the compatibility between 
modules and the main application it can cause serious issues. Everyone would 
like to have lean and clean software with all the features that we 
(personally) need immediately available (and only those), but in the real 
world things works differently, particularly when other people - colleagues, 
customers - are involved.

G.

-- 
*****************************
http://www.oyonale.com
*****************************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer images
- Posters

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On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:03:03 +0100, Gilles Tran wrote:

> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 47d56173$1@news.povray.org...
>> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:25:45 +0100, Gilles Tran wrote:
> 
>> Well, not for me they're not.  Not for most of the people I work with -
>> and I work in an office that consists of both technical and
>> non-technical people.  Most of my closest coworkers are not technical,
>> but quite a few are.  It used to be the other way around - I almost
>> never dealt with the non-technical people, being an IT person myself.
> 
> Well I'm in the feed industry, not an IT person and not knowing IT
> people (except to hire them...). I guess that folks who feed cows and
> pigs are special then ;) Not really kidding: it's an industry based on
> operational research, so crunching numbers is a normal way of life. Lots
> of these people actually live within Excel. Right now, we got a bunch of
> them downstairs being lectured about the joys of linear programming (and
> linear programming modelisation) and exporting data to and from MS
> Office and automating the whole processes. And they sure do know what
> they need.

My first job out of college was in the manufacturing industry (as one of 
the IT guys) - lots of engineering work, lots of finance/inventory 
control work.  Different needs for different folks.

>> applications for the first Windows platform.  Everyone "had to have"
>> the Windows environment for some reason, and WordPerfect and Lotus were
>> late to the game *because* Microsoft didn't release the APIs externally
>> (and changed some of them between beta and RTM, just to *really*
>> fsck-up their competition).
>> This is not conjecture on my part - this is well-documented fact.
> 
> And it doesn't change the fact that Lotus had become obsolete and that
> Excel was a superior product with features that people had been
> expecting (and not getting) from Lotus for a while. Here, Excel was the
> reason we switched gradually to Windows, not the other way round. It's
> not like Windows was actually useful for anything else back then. (I did
> play tic-tac-toe with Windows 1 though).

Maybe for you, but I am fairly certain that it met the needs for a 
significant portion of the user base.  But it wasn't "new", it wasn't 
"shiny", and it didn't run on Windows.  And then when it did, it sucked 
because the UI didn't work right (ie, consistently with other Windows 
programs).

If the developers at Lotus hadn't had to screw around with broken/
incomplete API documentation and try to get the UI working properly, they 
might've been able to add a few new features that were being requested.  
But from having sold Lotus 1-2-3 (and books on it) as well as the 
Microsoft products (also used to work in software sales once upon a 
time), I do know what people were generally buying in the late 80's and 
the reasons they were buying it.  It was kinda my job. ;-)

>> department.  I've seen accounting spreadsheets that would make most
>> people's heads hurt for days on end.
> 
> Oh I've seen that too, no arguing necessary. And the Comic Sans
> presentations too.

Yeah.  The latter drive me nuts.  Those types of presentations also tend 
to be fairly "busy" - too much going on on the screen - "hey look, I can 
do stupid animations on the screen!" ;-)

Jim

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On 10 Mar 2008 11:29:07 -0500, Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:

>On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:18:52 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>
>> Isn't that how you get cheap programmes, though? If you reuse code and
>> generic solutions combined with not testing fully the production costs
>> are kept low (ish).
>
>Well, yes, code reuse is an important aspect of development today.  But 
>there's nothing that says that reusable code must be sloppy or non-
>optimised. :-)
>
>Jim

As you say :)

Regards
	Stephen

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And lo on Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:37:47 -0000, Gilles Tran  
<gil### [at] agroparistechfr> did spake, saying:

> "Phil Cook" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> a écrit dans le message  
> de
> news: op.t7s7rzxyc3xi7v@news.povray.org...
>
>> No and I'm not saying users are dummies (ignorant perhaps), what is  
>> being
>> said is that the core functionality of the program is being expanded at
>> the expense of memory when the majority of users may not be using the
>> majority of the functions.
>
> The Excel solver is optional. And it's kind of annoying when you have to
> send a file to someone assuming it's installed when it's not... Ditto for
> any application that require plugins. Modular applications are nice but  
> when
> one has to share documents (which is the norm in many working  
> environments)
> it can be problematic. Also, the process itself of finding, adding and
> removing modules adds to the complexity (where's that friggin video  
> library)
> and when software operation becomes dependent on the compatibility  
> between
> modules and the main application it can cause serious issues.

I agree locating third-party plugins is annoying and tiresome, except  
we're not talking about a third-party here; the program should know where  
it has put its own stuff. If I send you a spreadsheet that uses ACCRINT  
Excel should know that requires the Anayls32.xll and Funcres.xla and just  
load them up as needed.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Set it to something like "download but ask me before installing". Then 
> whenever you're ready to reboot, you install them and reboot.

Or, if you get caught, just go into the services panel and stop the 
service, but leave it set to automatic. Then when you reboot, it comes back.

Note that if you have it set to "load but don't install", it'll even 
prompt you to install when you turn off the machine, so you don't even 
take any of your own time.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> And when the automated updates screw the machine up, the user is 
> basically screwed.

That's what System Restore is for. Which Linux doesn't have, to my 
chagrin. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> A lot of the bloat comes from inefficient coding - after all, I can put 
> 32 GB of memory in a machine nowadays, so why do I need to worry about 
> optimisation?

Hey Warp! This is the kind of comment I was talking about when I was 
being amused by having a >32meg boot partition on Linux. "Oh, for the 
good old days, when your boot loader would fit on the biggest hard drive 
you could buy!"  :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:06:42 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> And when the automated updates screw the machine up, the user is
>> basically screwed.
> 
> That's what System Restore is for. Which Linux doesn't have, to my
> chagrin. :-)

I've tried using System Restore in the past; nice idea, but I could never 
get it to work properly.

My solution is to use VMware and take a snapshot before doing something 
potentially bad.  No fuss, no muss.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> It's not a question of "so many features *I* don't need to use", but "so 
> many features that *most* users don't need to use". 

A lot of the bloat comes from features you use without knowing it.

A lot of the bloat in Windows, for example, comes from domain services, 
remote management, and so on. None of that gets used by the home user.

A lot of the bloat in Excel, for example, is including the ability to 
write macros in any .NET language and link them into the spreadsheet, 
and talking to a SQL server from your spreadsheet. Do you do that? No. 
Does the accounting department of a 10,000 person company use that? Sure 
thing.

> I don't know that 1-2-3 would be completely useless by modern standards - 
> I think a lot of tasks that people use Excel for these days aren't much 
> beyond what 1-2-3 was capable of.

99% of *my* use is exiting CSV files. I'm hardly typical either, tho.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Phil Cook wrote:
> But do the people who don't use the solver or VBA have the option of 
> removing it from their installation? What features are deemed integral 
> to the programme? 

Look at the installer. The one for office has dozens and dozens of 
sub-packages.


-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Phil Cook wrote:
> an optional component? If it's plonked in as a base feature then 75% of 
> customers will have it sitting there taking up space and never being used.

Last disk I bought cost less than $0.02 per megabyte. So if you have a 
feature that takes ten meg on disk, it costs you less than a quarter to 
store it over the lifetime of the disk.

They don't take up space in memory. We have demand paging, remember? 
That's why you can't delete or write to an executable file while it's 
running.  (Which is true on Linux, too, for that matter.)

> Yes and am I saying those options shouldn't be there? No I'm not what 
> I'm asking is does the program dynamically load in the "embed video" 
> library when such an action is attempted or is it just loaded on principle?

It's demand loaded when it's paged in. Virtual memory was invented back 
in VAX days, remember? There's no distinction between "loaded on 
principle" and "loaded when I branch to the code."

> No and I'm not saying users are dummies (ignorant perhaps), what is 
> being said is that the core functionality of the program is being 
> expanded at the expense of memory when the majority of users may not be 
> using the majority of the functions.

*Virtual* memory. It's loaded off the disk into RAM when you jump to it. 
It's not even taking up swap space, let alone RAM, if you're not 
actively working with it. That's why they call it a working set.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Most of the reason for 1-2-3's demise was similar to the reason 
> WordPerfect was killed off 

No it isn't. Jazz sucked. Lotos killed off 1-2-3 themself.

> - Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive 
> practices when it came to releasing API information for creating 
> applications for the first Windows platform.

Is it still bad when Apple does the same thing? :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New escribió:
> Note that if you have it set to "load but don't install", it'll even 
> prompt you to install when you turn off the machine, so you don't even 
> take any of your own time.

Yep, that's a very useful feature. Too bad it has an "install and 
shutdown" button but no similar thing for rebooting. It makes no 
sense... I actually tried it. I clicked reboot while updates were 
waiting to be installed, it rebooted and then told me the updates were 
still waiting! I then clicked Shutdown instead, it logged me out, 
installed the updates, and finished shutting down.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Saying "people don't restart the app all the time, so startup times 
> don't matter" is just like saying "computers are fast nowadays, so 
> optimization doesn't matter".

The first mainframe I worked on had swapping, not paging. The OS was 
organized that you had one page (Job Information Table) that stored all 
the important things about your process - credentials, quotas, etc.

When you got swapped out (rather, when you allocated pages), the OS 
looked for a space on the swap disk that would hold your process. But 
the way it did it was to first find a page for your JIT, calculate how 
many sectors would pass under the heads of the swap disk while it 
rewrote the channel program in the JIT to include the right memory 
locations, and then swapped out the rest of the pages, again rewriting 
the channel program to put them in a time-optimal order.

When you got swapped in, the system read the JIT, allocated the memory, 
and stored into the JIT the instructions for the disk drive as to where 
to load each block of disk into memory, and handed it to the IO 
processor just as the first sector was coming under the head.

Nowadays, you have disk drives that don't even tell you what the layout 
of the sectors on the disk are. And the processor actually takes 
interrupts for every block transferred. It's impossible to figure out 
how many instructions the processor will execute while any given sector 
passes under the heads.

Programmers these days, they just don't know how to write efficient code.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New escribió:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> And when the automated updates screw the machine up, the user is 
>> basically screwed.
> 
> That's what System Restore is for. Which Linux doesn't have, to my 
> chagrin. :-)

That never did anything useful for me... Or for dozens of people who had 
system fuckups.

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Warp wrote:
>   The main point is whether you were able to run X with it or not.
> To simply use the console you could use a microwave oven. ;)

I worked on a diskless solaris machine with 4M of RAM at one point, 
swapping over the ethernet. It ran.  It took about 10 minutes to switch 
focus on the windows, but it ran. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I've tried using System Restore in the past; nice idea, but I could never 
> get it to work properly.

I have occasionally had it fail. When everything's been going for a 
while and I'm about ready to do a full backup, I usually turn it off and 
turn it back on again, to get rid of all the intermediate incrementals.

> My solution is to use VMware and take a snapshot before doing something 
> potentially bad.  No fuss, no muss.

That's how I work it with Linux.  Drop down to single-user and tar the 
whole thing up. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:38:43 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I've tried using System Restore in the past; nice idea, but I could
>> never get it to work properly.
> 
> I have occasionally had it fail. When everything's been going for a
> while and I'm about ready to do a full backup, I usually turn it off and
> turn it back on again, to get rid of all the intermediate incrementals.
> 
>> My solution is to use VMware and take a snapshot before doing something
>> potentially bad.  No fuss, no muss.
> 
> That's how I work it with Linux.  Drop down to single-user and tar the
> whole thing up. :-)

I do that as well when I really need to.

Jim

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:14:34 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> It's not a question of "so many features *I* don't need to use", but
>> "so many features that *most* users don't need to use".
> 
> A lot of the bloat comes from features you use without knowing it.

Well, I used to do OS management, so I do know about features like domain 
services etc - networking was/is my livelihood. :-)

> A lot of the bloat in Windows, for example, comes from domain services,
> remote management, and so on. None of that gets used by the home user.

True.  Then there's other things like MSN Messenger, which until 
relatively recently was installed, started, and you had to really mess 
around to get rid of.

> A lot of the bloat in Excel, for example, is including the ability to
> write macros in any .NET language and link them into the spreadsheet,
> and talking to a SQL server from your spreadsheet. Do you do that? No.
> Does the accounting department of a 10,000 person company use that? Sure
> thing.

Well, maybe, maybe not.  It depends on the company.  Thing is, when I'm 
operating with a database, I'll use a database program, not a 
spreadsheet.  I do a fair bit of that sort of data manipulation, but I 
find it easier to use Rekall or oobase as a SQL client to get what I'm 
looking for.

>> I don't know that 1-2-3 would be completely useless by modern standards
>> - I think a lot of tasks that people use Excel for these days aren't
>> much beyond what 1-2-3 was capable of.
> 
> 99% of *my* use is exiting CSV files. I'm hardly typical either, tho.

exiting? ;-)

Jim

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:45:47 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Warp wrote:
>>   The main point is whether you were able to run X with it or not.
>> To simply use the console you could use a microwave oven. ;)
> 
> I worked on a diskless solaris machine with 4M of RAM at one point,
> swapping over the ethernet. It ran.  It took about 10 minutes to switch
> focus on the windows, but it ran. ;-)

At the university I went to, we had some of these Sun SLC workstations, a 
few 1+s, a 2, and a big rack-mounted system (I forget the model number).  
The rack-mounted system hosted the disk for the diskless stations.

We went through a phase of playing around with the DikuMUD source code, 
and ran a MUD on the Sparc 2 (which was also running Ingres, which is 
relevant because we coded a character in the MUD called 'Ingres' that was 
impervious to attacks.  You could kill it by typing "Look at ingres", and 
that was it - because our experience was so bad with the product, we had 
to take it out on someone.  Nothing like being a god character, creating 
an Ingres character instance, and then looking at it just to watch it 
die....<g>).

We only had about two dozen machines in total, and they were used for 
teaching Ada, MODSIM II, and I think FORTRAN.  We had so many students 
who loved playing the MUD that often times we couldn't free machines up 
for students who had actual homework to do.

I wrote the following program to deal with the problem:

--- snip ---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

main()
{
	int bignum = 100000;
	while (malloc(bignum));
}

--- snip ---

(As I recall, the actual code included logic to divide bignum by two when 
it fails and try again - but this will suffice)

We could always tell when it had been run on one of the diskless 
stations, because the rack-mounted system's disks would start thrashing 
like mad.

The really neat thing about malloc'ing all the memory under SunOS 4.2 
(and probably other UNIX OSes) is that if the OS can't allocate memory to 
even open a file handle, the system just sits there - you can't find out 
what happened.  The only way out with those machines was a Stop-A restart.

Ah, the good old days....<g>

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 99% of *my* use is exiting CSV files. I'm hardly typical either, tho.
> exiting? ;-)

Editing.

Actually, today I told the boss "if you're going to send me a spread 
sheet with a table of file names, do *not* start the file names with 
digits."

I had a whole host of files like
  75/75-px-Fred.gif

It was, shall we say, unhappy to learn they weren't *supposed* to be 
formulas.

Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience 
I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New wrote:

> I worked on a diskless solaris machine with 4M of RAM at one point, 
> swapping over the ethernet. It ran.  It took about 10 minutes to switch 
> focus on the windows, but it ran. ;-)

Pfft. I ran on a diskless machine with 2 MB of RAM and *no* virtual 
memory at all. It took milliseconds to switch window focus. :-P

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

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience 
> I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.

  You should demand your money back.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   You should demand your money back.

If I know Sun, they'll probably honour that request. (Although possibly 
after a small admin fee...)

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

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:04:44 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> 99% of *my* use is exiting CSV files. I'm hardly typical either, tho.
>> exiting? ;-)
> 
> Editing.

Couldn't resist. ;-)

> Actually, today I told the boss "if you're going to send me a spread
> sheet with a table of file names, do *not* start the file names with
> digits."
> 
> I had a whole host of files like
>   75/75-px-Fred.gif
> 
> It was, shall we say, unhappy to learn they weren't *supposed* to be
> formulas.

Ouch.

> Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience
> I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.

Huh, that's not been my experience.  What version are you looking at?

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience 
>> I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.
> 
>   You should demand your money back.

You're so cute sometimes.  <pat pat>

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Huh, that's not been my experience.  What version are you looking at?

Whatever is recent. You put the cursor on a cell and start typing, and 
it doesn't replace the entry. You try to cursor off, it doesn't move. 
You replace a cell and go to save the file, and you have to cursor out 
of the cell before it agrees the spreadsheet is changed. You right-click 
on the place at the top where you enter equations, and you don't get a 
copy/paste menu. You type something that looks like a URL, then go back 
and try to change it, and it wont let you click the URL to put the 
cursor inside it.  All sorts of stuff like that.

And ^V doesn't paste in a terminal window (under KDE at least). And "+ 
doesn't select the paste buffer in vim, but it does in gvim. And when 
you have a long URL you typed in by hand and the receiving site bounces 
you to a different URL (because the search failed or whatever), firefox 
will let you select that URL again, but you're pretty much screwed 
(afaict) if you actually want to edit it without retyping it.

... Since someone asked me where I found cut&paste doesn't work ...

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience 
> >> I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.
> > 
> >   You should demand your money back.

> You're so cute sometimes.  <pat pat>

  Well, you complaining about the UI of oocalc makes no sense. Nobody forces
you to use it, and it didn't cost you any money (which means you were not
ripped off). If you don't like it, don't use it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Well, you complaining about the UI of oocalc makes no sense.

Only if you think I expect any results from the comments other than 
conversation.

Complaining about how lame Vista is doesn't make any sense either. 
Happens all the time, tho.

Besides, sometimes people give actual useful advice and clear up some of 
my ignorance.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Complaining about how lame Vista is doesn't make any sense either. 

  Actually it does, given that it's rather expensive and one would expect
some level of quality. Also the fact that Microsoft has a de-facto monopoly
status makes it even more relevant.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Complaining about how lame Vista is doesn't make any sense either. 
> 
>   Actually it does, given that it's rather expensive and one would expect
> some level of quality. 

But complaining about it generally isn't going to improve the quality of 
Vista, whereas it might actually improve the quality of GNU stuff, yes? 
:-)  Certainly complaining about oocalc is more likely to be productive 
than complaining about excel.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:20:45 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Huh, that's not been my experience.  What version are you looking at?
> 
> Whatever is recent. You put the cursor on a cell and start typing, and
> it doesn't replace the entry. 

Worksforme.

> You try to cursor off, it doesn't move.

Worksforme

> You replace a cell and go to save the file, and you have to cursor out
> of the cell before it agrees the spreadsheet is changed. 

Worksforme

> You right-click
> on the place at the top where you enter equations, and you don't get a
> copy/paste menu. 

Never tried this, I always use the keyboard shortcuts.

> You type something that looks like a URL, then go back
> and try to change it, and it wont let you click the URL to put the
> cursor inside it.  

This behaviour I see, but because it changes the URL to a clickable 
link.  There's probably an option to disable that reformatting, but I do 
that so rarely I haven't bothered trying to find the setting.

> And ^V doesn't paste in a terminal window (under KDE at least). 

Does in GNOME - I use that regularly.  This is probably, though, one of 
my biggest beefs with Linux programs - the copy/paste buffer isn't always 
common between apps.

> And "+
> doesn't select the paste buffer in vim, but it does in gvim. And when
> you have a long URL you typed in by hand and the receiving site bounces
> you to a different URL (because the search failed or whatever), firefox
> will let you select that URL again, but you're pretty much screwed
> (afaict) if you actually want to edit it without retyping it.
> 
> ... Since someone asked me where I found cut&paste doesn't work ...

I've never had a problem editing URLs in Firefox....

Jim

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Darren New wrote:
> :-)  Certainly complaining about oocalc is more likely to be productive 
> than complaining about excel.

No, complaining is never that productive, though sometimes we can't 
help.  Complaining to be effective in the free software world should be 
filing a bug report and detailing the steps to reproduce it.  Most 
people just give up on it and turn to forum bashing.

Of course, much more effective than complaining or filing bug reports is 
taking some time to volunteer to squash a few bugs or add missing and 
useful functionality, if you're a developer.  Yesterday, there was a 
complain here about Thunderbird not having a simple textbox to edit 
newsgroups signatures.  I'd never know that as I don't use it.  I'm 
thinking of implementing it whenever I get the time.  Shouldn't be that 
difficult, as soon as I get to the exact point where it happens in the 
gigantic Mozilla source.  Thankfully, that project has come up with some 
excellent infrastructure to help out identify bugs (bugzilla) or browse 
the fully annotated and hyperlinked source, via LXR:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/

but it's so damned biiiig! :P

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Darren New wrote:
> You put the cursor on a cell and start typing, and 
> it doesn't replace the entry. You try to cursor off, it doesn't move. 

oh, please!  I don't use spreadsheets or text formatters that much, but 
I was compelled to test it out.  Downloaded the latest OO and opened it 
side by side with Excel under Windows 2000.  Both work as they should:
you put the cursor on a cell (either by mouse or arrow key) and it 
replaces the previous entry.  You move it with the arrow key, and it 
goes off the cell as expected.

Do you work for Microsoft to be spreading such annoying FUD?

> You replace a cell and go to save the file, and you have to cursor out 
> of the cell before it agrees the spreadsheet is changed.

Didn't happen either.

> You right-click 
> on the place at the top where you enter equations, and you don't get a 
> copy/paste menu.

This is another software and it does not feature the exact same key 
combos or menu items.  It's such a common complain that people want 
other software to behave *exactly* like the software they're used to.

But do not fear:  a simple CTRL+C over the cell will copy as expected. 
Much easier than moving the hand away to reach the mouse to reach the 
top bar to reach a stupid submenu for this basic functionality.

> You type something that looks like a URL, then go back 
> and try to change it, and it wont let you click the URL to put the 
> cursor inside it.

that's true.  Not even in the top bar.  I didn't carefully check 
available settings, though.

> All sorts of stuff like that.

Well, only 1 out of 3 issues you mentioned turned out to be true and one 
was just the regular "X doesn't behave like Y".

OTOH, I'm testing the Windows version, not Linux, though I don't recall 
any problems like that from my home Linux usage to edit my finance tables...

you're much too cranky these days, Darren...

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Worksforme.
> Worksforme
> Worksforme

It probably depends on exactly what you've done and what state it's in. 
I just know that after about 10 minutes I fell back to editing the CSV 
files with VI. :-)

>> You right-click
>> on the place at the top where you enter equations, and you don't get a
>> copy/paste menu. 
> 
> Never tried this, I always use the keyboard shortcuts.

That didn't work to me.

> Does in GNOME - I use that regularly.  This is probably, though, one of 
> my biggest beefs with Linux programs - the copy/paste buffer isn't always 
> common between apps.

Yeah. Or there's more than one of them. Or stuff in the buffer does or 
does not get replaced simply by changing the focus.

> I've never had a problem editing URLs in Firefox....

This was specifically a URL that immediately redirected to a different 
URL. I couldn't figure an easy way of copying it into the address bar 
without having to retype it.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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nemesis wrote:
> you put the cursor on a cell (either by mouse or arrow key) and it replaces the
previous entry.  You move it with the arrow key, and it goes off the cell as expected.

That was my bad. If you're up in the formula-entry bar, the arrow keys 
won't move you out of it, even for up/down. Again, just something I 
stumble over. Understandable, but frustrating nevertheless.

>> You replace a cell and go to save the file, and you have to cursor out 
>> of the cell before it agrees the spreadsheet is changed.
> 
> Didn't happen either.

This is very reproducable for me.

I open a CSV file with "oocalc yadda.csv"
I click on one of the cells that has text.
I type different text without hitting return or anything.
Neither the little floppy icon nor the save menu is enabled.
Click on a different cell, and those menus are both enabled.
Build 2.0.4.7.

Just something I stumble over.  A break in the flow of work where I have 
to put away thinking about the next step in order to remember what I do 
about this problem. :-)

>> You right-click on the place at the top where you enter equations, and 
>> you don't get a copy/paste menu.
> 
> This is another software and it does not feature the exact same key 
> combos or menu items.

Well, yes.  It hasn't any right-click menu, which I find surprising 
given the cells themselves have right-click menus.  I've gotten in the 
habit over years of using the right-mouse button. Probably because I 
used Smalltalk so much.

> It's such a common complain that people want 
> other software to behave *exactly* like the software they're used to.

I'm not used to any other spreadsheet software, if that's what you mean. 
I have no idea if Excel does the same sort of thing or not. I just 
expect the right-click button on the edit box for a cell to have the 
same sorts of options as the right-click box for a cell. It's a 
consistency-with-itself thing, not a consistency-with-other-stuff thing.

> But do not fear:  a simple CTRL+C over the cell will copy as expected. 
> Much easier than moving the hand away to reach the mouse to reach the 
> top bar to reach a stupid submenu for this basic functionality.

Unless you're already in the top bar. :-)

> you're much too cranky these days, Darren...

Yah. Working too hard.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> That was my bad. If you're up in the formula-entry bar, the arrow keys
> won't move you out of it, even for up/down.

Of course not, they are used for moving through the text being edited!  Use ESC
to get out.  It's the same in Excel, if I remember correctly...

> This is very reproducable for me.
>
> I open a CSV file with "oocalc yadda.csv"
> I click on one of the cells that has text.
> I type different text without hitting return or anything.
> Neither the little floppy icon nor the save menu is enabled.
> Click on a different cell, and those menus are both enabled.
> Build 2.0.4.7.

Sorry, no problem in 2.2.

> Unless you're already in the top bar. :-)

then, just CTRL+A(ll) and CTRL+C will do.

BTW, there's a way of editing hyperlinks:  enable View -> Hyperlink Bar.  It
should display the editable contents of the hyperlink.  It allows for links in
the  style "click here for foo"... should've gone for the Help from the very
first time, but you know how hackerish geeks can get... :P

Well, we all learned something today, thanks to your cranky complaints... :P

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On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:39:56 +0100, nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I open a CSV file with "oocalc yadda.csv"
>> I click on one of the cells that has text.
>> I type different text without hitting return or anything.
>> Neither the little floppy icon nor the save menu is enabled.
>> Click on a different cell, and those menus are both enabled.
>> Build 2.0.4.7.
>
> Sorry, no problem in 2.2.

I can comfirm that the issue exists in 2.3.0 (Windows version).


-- 
FE

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> That was my bad. If you're up in the formula-entry bar, the arrow keys
>> won't move you out of it, even for up/down.
> 
> Of course not, they are used for moving through the text being edited! 

Right. That's why I said "my bad." :-)

> Sorry, no problem in 2.2.

Heh. OK, so I guess someone fixed that one.

>> Unless you're already in the top bar. :-)
> then, just CTRL+A(ll) and CTRL+C will do.

I'm not sure ctrl+C works on my version. Probably.

> BTW, there's a way of editing hyperlinks:  enable View -> Hyperlink Bar.

That's the point at which I got pissed off and dropped into VI to edit 
it. ;-)

> Well, we all learned something today, thanks to your cranky complaints... :P

There ya go. And y'all should feel free to bit-bucket me if I get 
annoying. I'll try to tone it down. (Unless it's a microsoft product, of 
course, because then it's OK to complain about perceived but nonexistent 
problems. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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And lo on Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:20:45 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Huh, that's not been my experience.  What version are you looking at?
>
> Whatever is recent. You put the cursor on a cell and start typing, and  
> it doesn't replace the entry. You try to cursor off, it doesn't move.  
> You replace a cell and go to save the file, and you have to cursor out  
> of the cell before it agrees the spreadsheet is changed.

To put it another way the file won't save while you're in edit mode of a  
cell or the formula bar.

> You right-click on the place at the top where you enter equations, and  
> you don't get a copy/paste menu.

I do. THough I'll admit this is a bit screwed at least in XL2k. Edit a  
cell directly and the right-click menu will appear there, but not in the  
formular bar. Edit in the formula bar and you can right click in either,  
but you'll be changing the edit selection from bar to cell if you  
right-click the cell.

> You type something that looks like a URL, then go back and try to change  
> it, and it wont let you click the URL to put the cursor inside it.

F2 your functional friend :-) Assuming you don't use the formula bar edit.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Darren New wrote:
>>> You replace a cell and go to save the file, and you have to cursor 
>>> out of the cell before it agrees the spreadsheet is changed.
>>
>> Didn't happen either.
> 
> This is very reproducable for me.
> 
> I open a CSV file with "oocalc yadda.csv"
> I click on one of the cells that has text.
> I type different text without hitting return or anything.
> Neither the little floppy icon nor the save menu is enabled.
> Click on a different cell, and those menus are both enabled.
> Build 2.0.4.7.
> 

Yeah, that's because the change is not comitted to the worksheet yet. 
Press ESC and the worksheet hasn't changed. So technically it's right in 
not enabling the save button, because the document is changed the moment 
you *leave* the cell.

Manuel

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Manuel Kasten wrote:
> Yeah, that's because the change is not comitted to the worksheet yet. 
> Press ESC and the worksheet hasn't changed. 

Cool. That I didn't know.

(You know, I never said it was a bad program. I just said it's 
frustrating to me. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:29:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Worksforme.
>> Worksforme
>> Worksforme
> 
> It probably depends on exactly what you've done and what state it's in.

Likely, yes.

> I just know that after about 10 minutes I fell back to editing the CSV
> files with VI. :-)

Well, I probably would have done so as well, or used awk if it was a mass 
change.

>>> You right-click
>>> on the place at the top where you enter equations, and you don't get a
>>> copy/paste menu.
>> 
>> Never tried this, I always use the keyboard shortcuts.
> 
> That didn't work to me.

Shift+Del and Shift+Ins, not CTRL-C and CTRL-V.
 
>> Does in GNOME - I use that regularly.  This is probably, though, one of
>> my biggest beefs with Linux programs - the copy/paste buffer isn't
>> always common between apps.
> 
> Yeah. Or there's more than one of them. Or stuff in the buffer does or
> does not get replaced simply by changing the focus.

I'm pretty sure that it's that there's more than one.  I've noticed a few 
instances where exiting an application clears the buffer.  Like Firefox, 
for instance.  That drives me a little crazy.

>> I've never had a problem editing URLs in Firefox....
> 
> This was specifically a URL that immediately redirected to a different
> URL. I couldn't figure an easy way of copying it into the address bar
> without having to retype it.

I don't know that I follow - you mean like a tinyurl redirector?

Jim

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On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:39:09 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Build 2.0.4.7

Try a 2.3 release build instead....

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Well, I probably would have done so as well, or used awk if it was a mass 
> change.

Oddly enough, once I griped about it here, for some reason the program 
completely stopped annoying me. It suddenly seems to work wonderfully 
intuitively.  Either I stopped doing what was bothering me, or my brain 
rewired to understand the underlying behavior of the program correctly. :-)

> Shift+Del and Shift+Ins, not CTRL-C and CTRL-V.

That's another annoyance. I have different keyboards, and only one of 
the INS keys works for insertion. Or it's a numlock problem or something.

> I'm pretty sure that it's that there's more than one.  I've noticed a few 
> instances where exiting an application clears the buffer.  Like Firefox, 
> for instance.  That drives me a little crazy.

Yeah. X's cut/paste buffer management is really pretty screwy. As I 
understand it, as long as the application is open that put the "clip" in 
the clip buffer, other apps ask that app directly for the data, so it 
doesn't get buffered twice. When the app exits, it's supposed to put it 
onto the "real" clip buffer.

Some programs work that way, and those are the ones that override 
another program's clip when they get focus and have something selected. 
Others always just put the clip on the clipboard. Etc.

> I don't know that I follow - you mean like a tinyurl redirector?

Like that, but an error message.
http://wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?searchInput=xyzzy



-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:16:51 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Well, I probably would have done so as well, or used awk if it was a
>> mass change.
> 
> Oddly enough, once I griped about it here, for some reason the program
> completely stopped annoying me. It suddenly seems to work wonderfully
> intuitively.  Either I stopped doing what was bothering me, or my brain
> rewired to understand the underlying behavior of the program correctly.
> :-)

LOL, that's funny. :-)

>> Shift+Del and Shift+Ins, not CTRL-C and CTRL-V.
> 
> That's another annoyance. I have different keyboards, and only one of
> the INS keys works for insertion. Or it's a numlock problem or
> something.

Probably, yes - but you can't blame OO for that. ;-)

>> I'm pretty sure that it's that there's more than one.  I've noticed a
>> few instances where exiting an application clears the buffer.  Like
>> Firefox, for instance.  That drives me a little crazy.
> 
> Yeah. X's cut/paste buffer management is really pretty screwy. As I
> understand it, as long as the application is open that put the "clip" in
> the clip buffer, other apps ask that app directly for the data, so it
> doesn't get buffered twice. When the app exits, it's supposed to put it
> onto the "real" clip buffer.

Hmmm, maybe I need to file a bug with the Firefox project, then.

> Some programs work that way, and those are the ones that override
> another program's clip when they get focus and have something selected.
> Others always just put the clip on the clipboard. Etc.
> 
>> I don't know that I follow - you mean like a tinyurl redirector?
> 
> Like that, but an error message.
> http://wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?searchInput=xyzzy

Hmmm, interesting.  The original doesn't show up in the history, either.

Jim

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