Re: GRAND MASTER PLAN

[Christopher Browne <cbbrowne wolfe cbbrowne com>]

> On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 13:12, Christopher Browne wrote:
> [snips the 'why Abi instead of Gnumreic']
> > Or am I perhaps missing either some fundamental feature that AbiWord has
> > that would make its use spectacularly valuable, or some stupendously
> > fatal flaw in Gnumeric that makes it a horrible choice?
> 
> People expect reports to be presented as a document, like a word
> processor document, that's tidily formatted and can be easily slotted
> into other word processor documents for passing onto others.

Actually, based on the "trouble tickets" that I see come in at work, the
exact opposite is true.

I have seen precisely _zero_ requests for reports to be presented as
word processor documents, and _numerous_ requests for them to be
presented as spreadsheets.  And the main user doing the asking is one
that would NOT be considered one of the "sophisticated technical users"
around the organization.  He's NOT a "wild-eyed computer geek," by any
stretch of the imagination.

> You're suggesting to use a Spreadsheet which is all about calculation
> and less about Presentation.

Hmm?  I haven't seen any enhancements to spreadsheet software that were
about 'calculation' in well over a decade.  The last couple of years of
the "spreadsheet wars" (between Excel, Lotus 123, and Quattro Pro), it
was hard to see any calculation-oriented improvements beside all of the
(largely gratuitous) presentation-oriented changes.

> Gnumeric is fundamentally inappropriate when you take the user
> expectations into consideration.  Of course, we might wish to redefine
> user expectation rather that do it the same way as everybody else.

If what is being presented is:
 - An income statement,
 - Any sort of summary report,
 - Any sort of report consisting of columns filled with figures,
then I can't see what is "fundamentally inappropriate" about using a
spreadsheet for the purpose.

Indeed, using a word processor to work with columnar reports is likely
to be a lot _less_ user friendly than its alternatives.
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