I find it amazing that after so many years, and so much effort spent on implementations, the oo tools are still in what I would call "pre-release testing stage".
The main concern I have is that images cannot be handled reliably in oo Writer. Modern documents are image heavy. Rarely we see text-only documents. And often images are photographic. And sometimes many of them. Do take a look at the main information dissemination medium of our time: the web. The web has become a "multi media" medium, where it is so easy to create image-heavy web objects (and where the behavior actually is predictable!) So what happens if you create an image-heavy oo Writer document? Well, the images you painstakingly inserted , have later disappeared from your document.! What is left there in the document, in front of your eyes, is a placeholder that signals something like "read error" of "graphic cannot be displayed". And there is no way to get information from the document about what that inserted graphical object was, or where it came from. So in many respects, you have to create your document again, populating it with the illustrations you want it to contain. And a day later, again insert images ... ad nauseam. When this is the case, it is astonishing that people want to use oo Writer for mission-critical tasks. I was nearly saying that one should avoid using oo Writer, because it is so unreliable. But that would be incorrect. In my experience it *reliably* loses most images you inserted. I guess that the official response to this complaint is that one should use the tool in accordance with recommendations that are offered, like: [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images <https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=86682> <https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=86682> Well, if you read that text, it is obvious that there is no *guaranteed* way to use the tool so that bad things do not happen. Rather, its tone is rather something like "you might try this...", "If that does not work, try that..." "disable automatic backup might improve the tool behavior..." etc. Judging from user comments in these forums, "lost image problems" are wide-spread, and people are desperate to find a solution. Being a software implementer myself, my evaluation (at least of the Writer tool; but if to some extent implementation is shared by other oo tools, then they might be impacted too) is that the tool does not have a high quality implementation. It cannot keep track of its own data representations, and it cannot detect situations that might cause problems. If reliability and predictable behavior is something that should characterize oo tools, then more effort should be spent on preventing bad situations from occurring. Perhaps: * If certain image formats should not be used, then do not allow such objects to be inserted * if certain sizes of objects should not be exceeded, then prevent such objects from being inserted * If one should not have auto backup enabled when using images, then force the user to disable auto backup. As this is a forum for users, it would be interesting to hear from other users if they feel that the way ooWriter (mis-)handles images is OK. Would they accept that behavior is they had to pay some monthly fee for using ooWriter? Or is it the case that just because it is software free to use (gratis), then nobody is allowed to have critical opinions about it? /olle
