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Re: Why Aren't Open Source Tools Being Considered?
Subject:Re: Why Aren't Open Source Tools Being Considered? From:Rachel Rawlings <rachel -at- scrivovivo -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sun, 21 Aug 2005 06:03:50 -0400
Bonnie Granat wrote:
>I used it for about two months, and I was not at all sorry to stop using it.
>Yes, for a "competitor" to mimic Word so faithfully in many things and then
>*not* do some things the MS way is rather a pain in the patootie to someone
>who just opened it and began using it. I would never work with OO if I had a
>choice. In many ways, it just was inferior. But I'm primarily an editor, so
>that may be part of the problem for me.
>
Unfortunately, the OpenOffice developers get it from both sides. They
and the folks who put together the GNOME desktop environment have taken
a lot of heat from Unix users for trying to make Linux too Windows-like.
The standard Windows expectations, like Control-C meaning copy (rather
than the old Unix-hand's cancel)--which was done to emulate but not copy
the look and feel of the original MacOS, btw, otherwise Windows would
use Alt-C--have entered the Linux world.
The thing I remind myself when I'm frustrated with OpenOffice is that
Microsoft has spent 20 years or so on Word's development, adding
features here, stealing features there, and often putting functions in
places they hadn't been in a previous version. The OpenOffice community
has had about five years since taking a Sun project that was barely at
the level of Word 4 and Excel 5, and turning it into a fairly effective
competitor to Office 2003. Open-source is just beginning to leave its
Unix parentage and take its first real steps into the land of creeping
featurism that commercial applications have been in for a long time. ;)
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