Re: [gnome-db] Re: GRAND MASTER PLAN

[Alessandro Bottoni <alessandro bottoni infinito it>]

Alle 13:12, mercoledì 10 marzo 2004, Christopher Browne ha scritto:
> Yeah, I keep wondering why people keep pointing at AbiWord as the
> would-be "report presentation" tool.

Because it is much easier and much more rewarding to build up a document 
_destined to be printed on paper_ with a wordprocessor (or even a DTP system) 
than with a tool aimed to matrix-arithmetics like a spreadsheet.

Would you use MS Word to perform symbolic calculation?

> They'll have to "box" the contents into tables nested inside documents,
> when it would seem a whole lot more natural to put the data into
> spreadsheet cells, avoid the layer of indirection, and take advantage of
> the fact that Gnumeric can actually perform substantial calculations of
> its own.

> 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?

Every generic office user who has ever tried to print on paper its own annual 
financial report can tell you that he had to fight with huge tables that did 
not want to fit on the page (while remaining visibles). Trust me: leave the 
spreadsheets to their own job (matrix mathematics) and use a wordprocessor 
(or even a DTP like Scribus) for reporting. It's a paper-printing job, not a 
calculation one.

See you (if the list-owner will not ban me... ;-)
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Alessandro Bottoni