Re: StarOffice as idea source

[Steve Dunham <dunham cps msu edu>]

Justin <jfp@squinky.org> writes:

> On Sun, 26 Apr 1998, robert havoc pennington wrote:

> >We get the "better" for free, because the open-source nature of Gnome
> >means any reusable code can be moved to gnome-libs, and the distribution
> >model of Linux means everything will be beautifully integrated by Red Hat
> >and Debian. So don't worry about alien bloatware. What does need worrying
> >about is usability and non-hacker appeal.

> 	Yeah.. I think that when designing applications we should be
> aware of what a vetrinarian, hairdresser, real-estate broker or some
> non Information technology worker (the other 90% of computer users)
> would want out of a computing environment instead of what a kernel
> hacker would want.  Kernel hackers are going to want XEmacs and
> Latex and non-IT end users are probably going to want something more
> like StarOffice.

IMHO, we should keep the unix model of small programs that do one
thing well and that's it.  For a WYSIWYG WP, wordpad would be a better
model than StarOffice (or MS-Word).  It should be small, fast and not
overloaded with features.

StarOffice is large and often too complex for the casual user. (It's
complex enough that I became annoyed and turned to Latex for making
slides.)


Steve
dunham@cps.msu.edu