Why the Anger Revisited

[wstrohm]

There is a thread titled "Why All the Anger?" which I scanned. Perhaps I can answer that from a user's point of view.

Background: I have been using Macs since about 1986. Since 1995 I have had a PM8500 running Mac OS 9, but 2 months ago I bought a Dual 2.7 GHz G5 and am currently running Mac OS 10.4.2. Under Classic I run MS Office 98, which works just fine, but I'm trying to wean myself off of the Classic apps.

I received an e-mail from a friend who said I should try NeoOffice/J, so I downloaded and installed it.

1) I opened NeoOffice/J, was presented with a blank document, and proceeded to write a rather long letter. When I clicked "Save," I received the error message "No such object. The path to this object does not exist." Now that seems to me like an Open Dialog error, not a Save Dialog error. I had no way to recover from that error dialog ("OK" just returned me to the open document) other than to do Edit/Select All/Copy, which I assumed would put the text on the Clipboard. However, after opening Classic, then MS Word 98, I found the "Paste" menu item dimmed. When I clicked "Show Clipboard," the contents were empty. So the text did not transfer from NeoOffice to the Classic clipboard. The net result was I lost my letter. ANGER!

2) I have a spreadsheet in MS Excel, which I was able to open and save in NeoOffice/J. However, on the 2nd page of the spreadsheet, I have a chart made from a range on page 1. The chart did not come over correctly from MS Excel 98 to NeoOffice J. The formatting was all wrong, the range was wrong, I had multiple chart lines, etc. I spent about 2 hours trying to fix the chart and finally got a partially-acceptable chart showing. Then I found that I could not modify (i.e. add to) the series. I have no idea where there are commands to do that, but they certainly are not obvious. Finally I gave up. ANGER!

IMHO, NeoOffice/J is not ready for prime time. I plan to visit CompUSA today, bite the bullet, and buy whatever version of MS Office is available that will run under Mac OS X Tiger.

I do applaud your efforts, however. I can see that you have indeed made considerable progress, just not enough to provide a new, inexperienced (with NeoOffice/J) user with a useful app.

---- Bill

[Glenner]

Hmm, that surprises me a bit. For two reasons. First of all that you were unfortunate enough to have this problem. Secondly, if I try some new software out I only get angry if I have handed over hard-earned cash and the darn thing doesn't work. If I look at software like Neo/J I tend to try and find out what the problem is. So many of us have been happy to use it for professional work for quite a long time now (I have been using it for more than 2 years). However, if you feel you cannot afford to invest the time to learn a new product, then Neo/J is clearly not for you and you should get MS Office, particularly since you are familiar with a previous version. A word of caution though: I read in the most recent edition of the iCreate magazine a rant by their editor about MS Word. He was clearly frustrated because of frequent crashes, lost work etc which MS Word had caused him. Now, that would be a very valid reason for anger! I hope you will not experience the same problem. Good luck.

[wstrohm]

Glenner,

Thanks for your response. I just purchased MS Office 2004 for Mac, upgrade version. I have yet to install it, but if I have problems I will be really angry since I just spent $258.

It's not that I am unwilling to spend time learning, it's that if the 2 problems I mentioned can occur, then just on the face of it, NeoOffice/J is going to be a lemon. Maybe it's the interface with Tiger, maybe it's some sort of G5 phenomenon, don't know, but if I can't save a new document there's not much hope for an app. And if it gives me clearly nonsensical error messages, there is no hope for troubleshooting.

I am more comfortable with a new version of Office, since I have upgraded Office previously with no problems at all. Your advice has now been taken.

---- Bill

[Waldo]

[OPENSTEP]

Well, not addressing (1), but as to (2)...

A lot of the "anger" that people seem to have against both Neo/J as well as OpenOffice.org is that it's not Microsoft Office. For better or for worse, it's been billed by OOo marketing as well as the general OSS leaning press as the "MS Office Replacement" or even the "MS Office Killer" with the promise of interoperability with MS Office.

It's definitely not 100% compatible with MS Office and not seamlessly interoperable, even on the Windows platform where OpenOffice.org is arguably the most mature. Neither OOo nor Neo/J are in the same league as Office v.X and derivatives.

I think you'll find that your money to buy Microsoft Office v.X (2004...etc.) is money well spent. They really are good products, especially given the price.

Except when they segfault and don't save your documents. It's gotten better, but yes, it still happens with MS Office for OS X. As was said earlier up in the thread, for me it's more frustrating when you know you *paid* for something that doesn't work. Especially being a developer since I can stare at the stack traces and just know that if I had the source to what I in theory "bought" I could fix the braindead crash so I could make the software useful (though, I know, I licensed it, I didn't buy it....).

That's why I personally love open source. A lot of folks are posited the point "you have access to the source" and most people are like "what does that do for me?". Being a programmer, it does a heck of a lot for me since I know I have the skills to fix the bugs and make enhancements to the software I use every day. It's a pity that I can't do that because of closed source garbage. E.g. I *love* FrameMaker and would love to port it to Carbon for free. Although I bought the product, I still can't update it even though Adobe discontinued it for the Mac because I don't have access to the source code. Same damn thing happened with Lotus 1-2-3 for Mac when they didn't do the PowerPC port. I would've done that in a heartbeat had I had access to the source code. I also loved FullWrite, and it's still my favorite word processor. Same thing. I even spent two years trying to get access to the source code for that one, trying to buy the rights (I liked it that much), and just got laughed off by the company.

Being a single individual with no overall profit motive (or stock to offer in exchange...) I got brushed off for all three of those apps. I have the skills to do the engineering to continue using them on OS X (or PowerPC, etc.) but instead I just had to face the fact I had no access to the source code and could do nothing. And so three great programs just were forced to languish and die. If I could get source code and port any of them, I'd move back to them in a heartbeat. Instead I'm forced to find alternatives not because I want to, but because of the nature of closed source software.

Sorry for the long rant, but perhaps it helps convey why I love the concept of open source so much and will use OSS software over other alternatives, warts and all.

ed <--- finally saw an arroyo toad

[JKT]

Why the Anger part three:

I used MS Office 97/98 to write my PhD thesis (250+ pages and about four months of solid work, fwiw) and half way through I discovered that my files had become partially corrupted. Sensibly, I had been making backups all along, but it soon became apparent that the corruption had in fact started many versions earlier, but didn't become apparent until too late (and any versions that didn't experience the corruption were too old to be of any use). Once I'd dealt with that, I then had to contend with a number of annoying bugs in Word such as style numbering reverting back to 1 half way through my document whenever I saved it, etc. I managed to salvage my document eventually but it cost me a lot of time and effort at period in my life when I needed it the least - all in all I lost a full month of my life to this bollocks and I have studiously avoided using MS Office for as much as I possibly could ever since. Once bitten and all that...

The moral of the story - don't expect that paying for what should be an absolutely rock solid application by now, given how "old" an application it is, will in fact provide you with such an application... all applications experience bugs and all applications will cause a degree of user frustration at some point in their use. It is a sad state of affairs in the computing world, but the only sure-fire way to avoid too much frustration is to back up and back up often... and even then you will still suffer occasions when this doesn't help. And in all likelihood those occasions will undoubtedly be when you have a deadline to meet!

[jjmckenzie51]

[jakeOSX]

at first i fell in love with MS word for the mac. on the PC i was a wordperfect guy, and let's face it, wordperfect guys are like mac guys, we expect it to just work.

and for a bit, word X did. it sure looks better than the PC version. so i was hopefull. and for most things, word is fine.

a 60 page doc with pictures and breaks, and tables... well, then it starts to choke.

been using Neo since 001. (I still have that binary too =D) and yes, there were rougher times for neo, but neo holds its own. and is my suite of choice.

the conversions aren't perfect. Neo hates Word styles. (styles for TOC Headings??? WTF mate?) and both programs have a tendancy to think for you.

and i'll admit it, i liked clippy.

anyway, to the OP, i would ask (politely) that you try to save something again, and when that error pops up to post a but with the console log. otherwise it just gets lost in the "hmm. i think someone else had that issue..."

-j
(who thinks there may have been a point to this post, but he is still looking for it)

[ovvldc]

Remember the Golden Rule in computing: Save It Now!