Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Side by side install of LibO and OOo

On 06/21/2011 02:51 AM, aqualung wrote:
> Jay Lozier wrote:
> > I have seen with other file types particularly audio and video files
> > where you might have two or three players and the last one installed
> > changes the file associations in the registry to it.
> Jay, that's right. A well-behaved program should inform the user during
> installation what it's going to do and offer the option of taking over all
> the file associations the program want, none of them, or individually choose
> only some.
>
> VLC (VideoLanClient) does exactly that. Last time I installed VLC, the file
> associations it wanted (all 98 of them!) appeared in a dialog box during
> installation. They were sorted into categories and sub-categories and each
> one of them could be selected or unselected individually. The only thing
> missing was extensive help for users unsure of what choices to make.
>
> However, in the case of LibO/OOo it might be better not to give too
> fine-grained a choice to the user... or perhaps the ability to
> select/unselect each file type should be hidden far down some "Advanced
> Users Only" dialog box. Otherwise there will be lots of confused users
> asking questions like, "When I double-click .odt files I get LibO Writer,
> when I double click .ott files I get OOo Writer, what's wrong??" when the
> answer will be, "It happens because of the choices you made during
> installation."
>
> Come to think, I suspect that's why the recommendation to uninstall OOo is
> there: someone thought this would be a good idea to forestall requests for
> assistance coming in. If I'm right about that, then it wasn't such a good
> idea, more like throwing out the baby with the bathwater...
When I installed 3.3.3 on Vista, I was asked about assigning the Word, 
Excel, and PowerPoint files to LibreOffice.

Are you saying that you want to have a "routine" that asks if you want 
LibreOffice to be your default office package for the ODF file formats, 
along with the MS Office file formats?  Just like Firefox asks about 
being the default web browser?

I know that, in XP and Vista, you can right click on a file and assign a 
software package to that file extension, but showing extension is turned 
off by default.  So if you have installed OOo and then install 
LibreOffice, you want to have a choice whether or not you want 
LibreOffice to take over being the default office package to use the 
associated file formats.

Would be interesting to see that, but how many "real world" users would 
have both OOo and LibreOffice on the same computer?

Yet, the concept of asking if you want LibreOffice to be your default 
package, with all the file associations, might be a good idea.



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