Re: [office] proposal for new position and space attributes for thelist level

[Oliver-Rainer Wittmann - Software engineer - Sun Microsystems Inc<Oliver-Rainer.Wittmann@Sun.COM>]

Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Wednesday 07 February 2007 15:00, Oliver-Rainer Wittmann - Software 
> engineer - Microsystems Inc wrote:
>> I hope you see the benefit of the new attributes and you will support
>> my proposal.
> 
> Thanks for your long email and explanation.
> I'm unconvinced of the benefits, and I think the MS compatibility is a red 
> herring for lists based on the simple premise that these extentions create a 
> far to complex solution that no user actually will understand and thus we 
> won't end up with something better.
>
In my opinion, the new attributes are as complex as the existing ones. 
I think the new attributes have the advantage, that the user doesn't 
have to take care about the paragraph indent attributes, when the user 
maps his/her imagination of position and space of the list label and 
the list item to the provided attributes of OpenDocument.

But what about my given examples? Do you agree that the given examples 
can be better represented respectively represented at all with the new 
attributes?


> I don't actually have a vote, so I'll just close this with my thoughts.
> If you talk to end users and usability people then MSOffice gets a very very 
> low grade for its usability in lists.
> Honestly, OOo doesn't get much better.  One blogger on planet openoffice is a 
> teacher and she said its too confusing for most people to use. Listen to her, 
> she works with actual users.
> Adding more complexity is going in the wrong direction, and is not doing 
> anyone any favors.

I think this is not the platform to talk about the usability of office 
applications.


Regards, Oliver.