At the risk of adding more noise to this discussion. The dissatisfaction that I have read about is not just about marketing but about OpenOffice.org (OOo) in general.
The following things would help me: I prefer discussion forums to mailing lists. The sheer number of mailing lists is off putting. It took me a long time to work out that mailing lists was the means of discussion. http://www.oooforum.org is, mostly, working very well and has come into being to meet this need - but this is a splintering of the OOo community. Make it easier for individuals or groups to try out an idea - indeed foster it. E.g. if someone says I think an OOo wiki would be good, don't discuss whether it will good or not, provide the web server to do it. When it proves successful make it more official, if it flops - so be it. When a group or individual tries something and it works recognise it. A couple of examples: OOoAuthors is not yet hosted on the "official OOo site". The official code snippets section http://codesnippets.services.openoffice.org, in my opinion, is not as successful as http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewforum.phtml?f=11 Yet that recognition has not occurred and thus the splintering of the community. Addons ------ There is no system for addons in OOo. By this I mean an easy means for people to create templates or macros, upload them to an official site, get them peer reviewed. Or for people to search for those templates and macros and download and install them. I have written the UI part for a Wizard for the download part and am working on an XML file format for transferring the info. But, at this stage I don't know if I will be able to get server space and a system that will work in the way that I envisage. If it was easier too create addons for OOo then the speed of change would appear faster. Lack of documentation for creating OOo addons is a major issue for me. I know about the SDK - I have spent the last 10 months trying to understand it. I am getting close to the point where I can probably write something that maybe more useful to people. Poor development tools. To me, for OOo to really pick-up speed the priority should be on development tools. The integrated development environment (IDE where you develop macros) in OOo is not particularly good. The API for it is such that I can't even write macros to improve it. Source code ----------- More documentation is required for understanding the OOo source code, and how to modify it, and then get it accepted into official builds. I would like an IDE for OOo source code. I am a long way off being able to make any changes in this area. At a fundamental level I think the design of OOo is flawed. The IDL looks like the code is using inheritance, but it is not. The IDl is a specification for the code with each implementation of the specification being rewritten. Thus the enormous bloat of the code. I have toyed with the concept of redesigning OOo - if anyone is interested I am happy to discuss this idea further. Thanks, Ian Laurenson --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
