Bad user experience and old issues never fixed in OOo
In some places, there are inconsistent dialog boxes in OpenOffice.org. Some of them have been shown by users since years, but never fixed, for -say- dark reasons.
We shouldn't underconsider such issues, because they are causing a slow acceptance of OpenOffice.org, and, more obvious, provide a bad user experience.
Just one example : Formula and Formula Shortly, the problem with this issue, is when you want to customize the menus, and you want to add the possibility to insert a Math Formula, you got a twice "Formula" choice => confusing, and not good for user experience.
Worse: if we think more deeply, this is even a design issue.
But not everything is bad in this story : reading the issue content, some people proposed an intelligent compromise (developers time is precious), like replace Formula Formula with "Formula Math" and "Formula Calc". This proposal is a good compromise, because waiting the issue to be fixed for true (mandatory), the change will avoid confusion.
I'd like to understand why, instead of simply fix this temporarly (this does not avoid to concentrate on something better), we see systematical, and administrative obstruction. If we add the language barrier, we have the current situation ...
For further information, see
issue 40747 , created : January 2005 !! ), duplicated in
issue 99333.
I hope this will progress asap ...
Libellés : High Tech, issues, OpenOffice, user experience
About the number of developers contributing to OpenOffice.org (again)
Back from FOSDEM (I'll write a word asap about it), I tried to see what happened in meantime, mainly what was committed in OOo tree.
If you remember my previous blog entry ( see
this link ), I wrote it was very easy to retrieve the most recent information, and have the number of people who commited code in some cws, for OpenOffice.org Project.
The magic link was:
CIA.vc server Now it is no longer possible, because
the stack of the recent commiters, including the sum,
disappeared.
I ignore what happened, and who did that, but that's clearly a
big regression for me, and yet another hidden information, who should be publicaly available.
Indeed, we now are in the situation where we:
- just see the (20 ?) most recent commits, nothing else
- have no idea on the number of contributors since we use svn
- cannot extract the exact content of a commit, and who did what in a cws (at least this is not as easy as it was using Bonsai, where we could even watch everything online).
I have contacted the owner of CIA.vc. Maybe he will explain me some tip, or how to proceed, to retrieve the values, and maybe more.
Libellés : Code, development, High-Tech, number of OOo devs OpenOffice
Discovering OpenSolaris and OOo build on it :)
Working with Frank Schoenheit and Pierre Pasteau on the moz2seamonkey01 cws, we had no proof our changes are ok on Solaris. The best I could do was to install OpenSolaris on a AMD XP4000+ / 3BG of RAM machine. After some garbage (I'm discovering this strange OS), I finally understood how to install -sort of- development environment.
And after some little changes I'll commit soon, I was even able to build seamonkey.1.1.13 zipped archives on OpenSolaris :-)
No hack, just trying to fix issue after issue, and I'm done.
The wiki is down, but I created a new task for students: build OOo on OpenSolaris. I think this is a difficult task, and it worth a try and a serious effort. I contacted
Christian Lins, who started the effort some times ago, but if you are interested or want to give me some advice, feel free to contact me :)
To be continued (after FOSDEM ) P.S. : the wiki is down, but I put some stuff
thereLibellés : development, High Tech, OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, Teaching OpenSource
I'm going to the FOSDEM 2009
I'm going to FOSDEM '09, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting. This will be my third participation ( see the previous one there :
FOSDEM 2007 and
FOSDEM 2008)
My contribution will be a little travel in OpenOffice.org source code, under a Workshop form. It is scheduled for Sunday, February 7, at 09:00 in the
OpenOffice.org Developer Room AW1.105, and will give an overview of the
Apple Remote feature I implemented on Mac OS X, and some other changes, like removing some menu entries, or even how I did the Impress 3D transitions using OpenGL (if time allows). The workshop will mostly be Mac OS X oriented, but the content will interested all ports. The idea is to explain the logical behind the changes, and to show how things are organized.
Last but not least, I'd be glad to meet all of you !
Libellés : Bruxelles, events, FOSDEM, High Tech, OpenOffice, workshop
