<https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/posting.php?mode=edit&f=106&p=437127> <https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/report.php?f=106&p=437127> <https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/posting.php?mode=quote&f=106&p=437127> Thank you and CONGRATULATIONS!! <https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=92106&sid=059b9ca72612edeb63ff1d201a6d9fad#p437127> <https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?p=437127#p437127>by tanstaaf1 <https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=95811> » Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:27 pm
I've just come back to Open Office after a multi-year fling with LibreOffice. The arc of my document application history is basically Wordstar/Lotus->MSOffice->OO->LIbre ... and now, I think, back to OO. What brought me back and what have I noticed and what would I like your developers/steering committee to keep in mind? Libre has, for me, gone off the deep end in gratuitous feature creep and senselessly increasing user interface complexity. Specifically? I was unable to reformat and properly print text I had copied and pasted in; I was unable to find what were once-upon-a-time pretty simple commands to see text formatting and change it; I was unable to use the help system to find help; I was unable to create an account on their website in a reasonable period of time to even ask for help. And it occurred to me -- after several hours of this roundabout with no progress being made toward a really simple thing -- that I might take another look at OpenOffice. And what I found was: OO installed much more quickly and easily than recent LO updates; OO opened to a MUCH simpler user interface; IN OO MY FORMATTING PROBLEM WENT AWAY! And I decided to post a thank you to the OO community and found how much simpler it was to create an account and post my comment here! Your software JUST WORKS. My suggestion to the OO developers is to adopt as a motto something Einstein supposedly said: "A scientific theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Now, in this case we are talking software, but I think this quote still is relevant. Know the needs of your target market and stop trying to add extra “features” that few people in the key demographic actually value. Lately it seems I'm living in an increasingly nightmarish dystopia. With software this is especially the case. Further, I suspect spreading software complexity is driving most of the cancerous spread of complexity and bugs into the bigger world. Remember the ORIGINAL Mac? Remember how you could just sit down and click with a mouse and pretty much figure out how to use everything in a reasonable period of time? What happened? Anyway, I thank the developers of Apache OpenOffice for allowing me to just get my work done this morning. Thanks for keeping the user interface SIMPLE and fast. Thanks for just working! KISS! Open Office 4.1.5 MacOS 10.12.4
