[Am-info] Rob Pegoraro saw the light

[Gene Gaines]

I will forward the entire newsletter from The Washington Post.
The item of interest is the first one, about OpenOffice.

Worth reading

Gene Gaines
gene.gaines@gainesgroup.com


This is a forwarded message
From: TechNews . com Fast-Forward <eletters@technews.com>
To: gene.gaines@ATTGLOBAL.NET
Date: Monday, July 15, 2002, 10:02:56 AM
Subject: Fast Forward: OpenOffice Improvements; Philips DVD; More...

=================Original message text===============
 ----------------------------------------

 Monday, July 15, 2002

Your weekly update on personal technology from The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro:

When I reviewed OpenOffice, a free competitor to Microsoft Office, on May 12, I found plenty to like but quite a few things that annoyed me too.

[
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4246-2002May11.html">Rob's OpenOffice Review.]
But I ended my assessment on a hopeful note. I reported that a complaint I'd filed at the OpenOffice.org Web site about its word processor's inadequate word-count feature had gotten a real, live response:

"Two days later, I saw that my report had been assigned a tracking number and a programmer, with his e-mail address listed."

An OpenOffice developer e-mailed me a few days afterwards -- showing no sign of having read my review -- and suggested that my feature request was impractical.

I replied with a lengthy summary of what I was looking for the program to do, complete with a screen shot from a competing program's word-count function. The programmer's reply: Come to think of it, that sort of thing might actually make sense.

Talking to tech support and actually being heard: What a shock!

(
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4568">You can read this correspondence here).
Several e-mails and a month later, a few programmers had cooked up a macro that allowed OpenOffice's word processor to count words in a selected block of text, not just the whole document. When I asked why this macro didn't work on multiple text selections, somebody revised it to allow that option as well.

(
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=1907&file=wordcount.txt">Here's a copy of that macro.)
What this could prove, of course, is that when columnists whine about missing features, some developers will show enough PR savvy to listen to them. But on one hand, I never identified myself as a Washington Post staffer in any of my correspondence. On the other, I have made many more feature requests directly to Microsoft Office product managers, and I have yet to see any of them acted upon.

Whatever the cause, I was happy to add this tool to my copy of OpenOffice, which has since become my day-to-day word processor, much to my surprise. I know there are real differences between this and Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice sometimes has its own moments of clunkiness (for instance, why can't it just accept that I want to view documents in the "online layout" mode?). But overall, I don't feel like I'm missing much by not using The Software That Everybody Else Runs.

-- Rob Pegoraro (rob@twp.com)

Challenging the VCR
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64345-2002Jul13.html?referer=email

With Faults of MP3 Software, It Pays to Pay
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64346-2002Jul13.html?referer=email

Dead Dot-Coms Walking
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64347-2002Jul13.html?referer=email

When DSL Stands for Disgruntled
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47015-2002Jul9.html?referer=email

'Virtual' Custody Solution
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63417-2002Jul12.html?referer=email

Solving Printer Errors
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64344-2002Jul13.html?referer=email

JumpStart Advanced, 2nd Grade; Audacity, Development Team; Mike Tyson Heavyweight Boxing; Age of Wonders II, The Wizard's Throne
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64024-2002Jul13.html?referer=email


 **********

 TechNews.com Links

 Personal Tech Section
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/technology/personaltech

 Fast Forward
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/technology/columns/fastforward

 Web Watch
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/technology/columns/webwatch

 Reviews
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/technology/personaltech/reviews/

 **********

 Target the Nation's Technology Capital
 http://techway.washtech.com/about/advertising.html

 When it comes to researching companies doing business in the Washington
 IT market, we have the data you need: Tech Almanac:
 http://www.techalmanac.com

 Check out our TECH Calendar of events throughout the area. You can even
 add your own event:
 http://wpni.technews.com/cgi-bin/udt/EVENT.EDIT?client=washtech&submitter=USER

 Know how Washington affects your world. Get our weekly e-letter on the
 latest technology policy and security developments in the
 nation's capital. Sign-up today for the TechNews.com Tech Policy and
 Security Week in Review http://www.technews.com/profile.
 *****

 E-Letter Services:

 Visit http://www.technews.com/profile/ to sign up for additional e-letters, unsubscribe or get help.

 To discontinue receiving this specific e-letter, simply reply with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line.

 To provide feedback, e-mail us at eletters@technews.com

 To request advertising information, e-mail us at advertising@technews.com

==============End of original message text===========