Re: Apache OpenOffice for iPad & Mac comments & suggestions

[PCS <pe...@bigpond.com>]

I can’t comment on iPad, I use an Android phone, but I’ve used OO on the Mac since Apple killed off AppleWorks (ex ClarisWorks) because I no longer trust Apple's productivity apps.

A few decades ago Apple killed off the Apple II AppleWorks without providing convenient ongoing access to archived data, including some Uni assignments of mine (I had a major job recovering them), and when they killed off the Mac AppleWorks a decade or two later they did the same thing, left me without convenient access to archived AW data files, so I anticipate that when Apple decides to kill off its current productivity software, Pages etc., the same thing will happen, no convenient access to archived data files, so I no longer use Apple productivity software, because I don’t trust the company to do the right thing. Perhaps I am over-reacting, but I am not giving them a third chance to muck me around.

The Mac is a great computer, by far the best UI and desktop for the way I work, which is the way I want to work, not the way Microsoft programmers have decided I should, one of the major advantages of the Mac is that it lets you configure it to suit yourself (Linux Maté is the nearest equivalent I’ve found, but it doesn’t really compare with the Mac for anyone working with an extensive filing system), but the Apple computer company does not always look after its long term clients as well as it should, too busy chasing pretty novelties and new clients I think.

So I strongly recommend the open source apps (OO and/or LO) over the Apple ones, where available, because they are probably less likely to leave you without access to archived data than Apple’s apps are, and they seem to be more powerful, my only complaint with them is the lack of a data base that I can make work for me, I routinely used DBs in AppleWorks (it was an excellent productivity app, good balance of features, power, and ease of use) but I have not even one DB in OO, I haven’t been able to work out how to set one up, it is too different from AW, so all I have now is contacts, which is very limited.

For anyone else with old Mac AppleWorks files, I know that LibreOffice now opens them, I opened and converted some AW spreadsheets in it recently. OpenOffice does not open AW spreadsheets properly.

Peter S.

P.S.  Learning difficulties:  I have used Pages and Numbers on the Mac occasionally to quickly do stuff that doesn’t need to be filed for future access, and they seem to be pretty straightforward, so if they are all that is readily available on iPad and you are familiar with a more powerful Office app like OO or LO or MS Office they should not be difficult to learn. If you are concerned about possible loss of future access, as I am, it might be worth saving them as PDF docs as well as in their native format, PDF has been around long enough that I think we can trust it to stay around.


P.P.S.  If anyone out there knows how to contact OpenOffice developers, could you suggest that they:

1.  Move the sheets access in spreadsheets from along the bottom of the window to a LH panel like in PDFs, Scrivener, Browsers, etc. Along the bottom is okay for just a few sheets, but when you have many sheets the tabs become too small to read the names in them, so vertical access via a large number of rows would be much more convenient than horizontal.
2.  Access & close RH (& LH) panel(s) from top menu bar instead of using dots halfway down the panel, they really are a jack-in-a-box nuisance if you’re not watching the pointer closely.
3.  Remember the last window configuration of each document, instead of the last one used.
4.  Set the default entry position after 'Copy Down' to the pasted row, not the original row, or allow user to select which row to edit in Preferences. I usually want to edit the copy, not the original, but I keep messing up the original row because the cursor stays there.
5.  Show the current colour in the selection box (e.g. with a bold outline), so you can see exactly what colour it actually is, the underline under the access point doesn’t work for me, and I doubt that I am totally unique (in fact I know I’m not, in the early 1980s I had two doppelgängers, one of them even driving a car identical to mine, to the great confusion of my friends).

PCS.


> On 21 Feb 2022, at 2:32 am, Julian THOMAS <Jt...@jt-mj.net> wrote:
> 
> I can too. I clung to AOO  for a few years after going from OS2 to Mac. I still use OO for some stuff but have switched to pages & keynote for new work - partly because at the time there was no OO option for my iPad.
> 
> Different folks - different strokes. 
> 
> Sent from JT's Ipad 
> 
> 
>> On Feb 20, 2022, at 10:59, Matthias Seidel <ma...@hamburg.de> wrote:
>> 
>> And Rob made it clear that he is not willing to "learn" Pages and Numbers.
>> 
>> I can understand him.
> 
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