I've had PhD's send in pages and pages of rants about how we're not doing our job correctly when we simply ask them for more details to reproduce their bug.
Yep. Bug 661 was apparently posted by a PhD and a lawyer (according to his web site). And a guy whose expertise is supposedly software testing and that sort of thing. I'm still shaking my head.
Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 8:25 pm Post subject: Re: Why all the anger?
pluby wrote:
Since I released Neo/J 1.1 Release Candidate, I have noticed a surge in very angry, accusatory, and just plain rude mail from new users (see bug 661 for a sample).
I had always received the occasional nasty gram, but the sudden surge after this release makes me think that Neo/J is suddenly tapping into a whole different type of user than before.
Frankly, this type of user is the type that makes me wonder why I bother releasing Neo/J. This is sad because I know that most users are rational, helpful, and reasonable.
Perk up Pat and Ed!
Let the nitpicking loonies and carping ingrates (staring a freeware gift horse in the mouth) roll off your back like rain off a duck. This is the penalty for breaking out of a "niche" of basically techie users into mainstream. A good sign actually. I can't tell you all the truly nasty beat-down brow-beating letters we got during my tech story consultant stint on Small Wonder (www.smallwonder.tv). The nuts and whiners go with success' territory. Just post the adequete beta warnings (and remind all that it's FREEWARE baby!) and ride it. It's the positive points which count. Your true PR trial will come with all those overdue Mac media interviews that will be coming your way because of all the squawk.
A nice red 96pt text warning message along the line of "not for lusers, fsck off" is my style KISS, back to basics I say...
While defintely fun, it is not a sort of attitude that brings you more users.. And we need more users. Who donate and test stuff. And of course use Neo because it is such a nice app. BTW, I saw a lot of people here posting rave reviews on Versiontracker _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
First off, thanks for RC1.1 NeoJ is looking and feeling better and better! (I like the light gray! It looks less windoze-ish.)
Just a thought from a joe-phd-user here: I think the fact that computer viruses are still being propagated by user-activated e-mail attachments means that you'll never get those users to not download NeoJ. It doesn't matter how many warnings you put on it, they'll download anything!
Lastly, I've had more troubles with the way Finder associates files than I can count. However, I haven't had any trouble with NeoJ taking over M$ Office file associations and I've had both installed side by side since about 0.7 or so (with a couple of reinstalls of both since then). I'm running currently running OS X 10.3.8 and office version 11.0 with NeoJ 1.1 RC1.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 8:10 pm Post subject:
While offtopic...do your Office:mac 11 files open OK with Neo/J 1.1 RC? I don't have the update (no reason to, after all, I eat my own dogfood) and can't really check to see if they changed the file type if you save a document "without extension" (at least that checkbox exists in Office:max v.10)
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a bug. Which version of MS Office are you using? My current theory (really just a guess) is that the bug only occurs with versions of MS Office that were released prior to Mac OS X's first release. In these versions, MS Office probably doesn't have an Info.plist file so the fact that Neo/J has one makes it the default application even if set the "default=false" attribute in Neo/J's Info.plist.
That may well be the case. I have a vague memory of something like this happening to my WordPerfect documents at one time, but I didn't think much of it at the time and went on about my merry way (WP for Mac is installed on my Mac, but it's a Classic-only app for sure!)
Smokey
I've had various builds of NO/J always installed, and have never run into this default app problem. If I had, though, I wouldn't waste time bitching here or anywhere else, since in my view it's an OS level issue (maybe I'm wrong). I just go to Get Info and fix it there.
As for the angry flamers who fail to read notifications about standing issues with bugs and try to roast you for it, you should just ignore the nasty letters and send a canned acknowledgement stating that the problem is being worked on. By this I mean you should have a few boilerplate responses that you call up and send that require, at most, no more than a personalized salutation and mention of the problem, then the rest goes out as is. It is, truly, a publish and be damned world and no matter how well you do, there are always wankers who will never be happy with your results.
I agree that an intermediary page that warns downloaders that NO/J is still at a Developer stage and may not be what the user expects is a good idea.
While offtopic...do your Office:mac 11 files open OK with Neo/J 1.1 RC? I don't have the update (no reason to, after all, I eat my own dogfood) and can't really check to see if they changed the file type if you save a document "without extension" (at least that checkbox exists in Office:max v.10)
ed
Ed,
I saved a file as a Word document without an extension and opened it seemed to open just fine in NeoJ. I didn't have anything too fancy in it for formatting (page numbers, some bold-faced text, etc.) but it looks okay.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:05 pm Post subject:
Cool. I think in theory the Mac office:2004 should be on par with office:2003 Windows, so that's good news. I did have one of those microsoft "test drives" on one of my newer machines at work, but strangely, I kept quitting it at the "Buy it Now" screen and just launching Neo/J instead
The impression I've got is that office development has pretty much stalled at M$ (at least for the mac, I can't speak for Windoze). The only differences I noticed between office X and 2004 were cosmetic. Sure they're probably doing bug fixing, but not much, the bugs that bother me are mostly still there in office 2004.
The only reason I still use M$ office is because I've had some difficulties in the different ways that OOo treats symbols from Word and I had to send Word files to my boss. (I could never get OOo to display the Symbol font that Word uses correctly and for some reason the symbols I inserted using OOo never showed up correctly when saved as Word files). However, I'll be my own boss starting in August, so I'll have a lot more control over my software.
Cool. I think in theory the Mac office:2004 should be on par with office:2003 Windows, so that's good news. I did have one of those microsoft "test drives" on one of my newer machines at work, but strangely, I kept quitting it at the "Buy it Now" screen and just launching Neo/J instead
Actually, I saw an old friend this monday and he had erased Office 2004 and installed Neo/J instead. I had never talked to him about it before but he was pretty enthousiastic. Right on.. _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:04 pm Post subject: My $0.02 CAD FWIW
1. The improvement in Neoj over the time I have been watching it (I pop in and out) is nothing short of amazing. When you consider there is only Patrick and Ed (who also has a full time job) doing the development, its unbelievable.
2. Neoj is now, IMHO, highly usable. Sure, its Doze/X11 heritage shows through when you open up dialogs (that seems like the most visible thing) but expectations have been set appropriately. If anything, they've been lowered a bit too much. Some people don't/won't read, however, so I don't see that more can be done.
3. Native menus was a very wise move. It nailed by far the most annoying Dozeism, IMHO.
4. I had the dubious pleasure of using MSO 2000 on Doze 98 recently. I had many crashes there, and none in Neoj by way of comparison.
And the look was gross, since it didn't have OSX rendering. To be fair, I didn't compare it to Mac office.
5. As others have said, all non trivial software has bugs, and Neoj is highly non trivial. Still, as I said, I didn't run into anything of substance.
6. Some people are just plain irritable SOBs. I don't like it when I run into them, but it happens, and will continue to happen.
7. It is easy to get annoyed at the unreasonableness and plain mean spiritedness of these types, but until they seek the professional help they so obviously need and/or adjust their medication, there isn't much that can be done for them.
8. It is critical, IMHO, to let go and move on. Still, I know this is easier said than done, and we all lose it from time to time.
9. You will never please everybody all the time, so don't even try. As long as you're doing a good job (and y'all are), everything is wonderful.
10. Different people with different experiences and situations will have different perspectives. We should try and understand them, but incivility is inexcusable and grounds for disengagement. Sure, don't overdo it, but it WILL be necessary from time to time, to maintain one's own equilibrium.
Eventually a civilized person will run into the issue and the problem will be resolved at that time.
11. Remember the old rule: never get into an argument with an idiot or a SOB - they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
1. I ran into the bug when I installed the release candidate
2. I posted to my local Apple computer club bulletin board
3. I got an answer that same day on the work around
4. I applied the solution
5. I continued using your excellent product
I thank you for the wonderful job you folks are doing on NeoOffice and think that the owerwhelming majority of downloaders agree that you are great folks.
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KISS, back to basics I say...
