[libreoffice-users] Re: Using and Formatting Logical Functions in Calc

On 7/5/12 2:41 AM, Andreas Säger wrote:

<snip>

> All this had been written hundreds of times for dozends of spreadsheets
> applications in books, web-pages, mailing lists and forums. People don't
> read this.

I know, but I have a hard time blaming X percent of them.  I run into 
many users who have no clue such information even exists or go about 
finding it.  They aren't "into" computers enough to search the web 
(occasionally they still have dial-up) as computers aren't major parts 
of their life, and library access can be minimal.  And no clue that all 
of the spreadsheets are very similar.

You can make that argument for lots of things.  There's hundreds of 
books on automotive electrical systems, but you still have people 
wanting a Ford manual to get specific information, for example.

I would be willing to bet the computer skills of the "average" computer 
user 30 years ago was higher than it is today.

> They want to have it explained for the exact problem they
> struggle with *right now* without ever telling any details about their
> problem. People want computers they can talk to and the machine resolves
> all the contradictions, completes missing information before it spills
> out the correct solution. Since today's machines fail at fuzzy logic,
> they try to find some human to resolve and complete

All of this I attribute to the "instant gratification" we get today with 
computers and related electronics.  Want a book?  Download it to an 
ereader, who has to wait for it to be shipped to you?  No need to go to 
the store and look for something, buy it online.  Etc., etc., etc.

> or even better:
> write a macro program so a single click substitutes 5 clicks.

When I was using my Atari 16/32 bit machines with Neodesk, I had macros 
for desktop operations all the time, for the very reason you mentioned. 
 These were actions I repeated often.  Now, most of those reasons I 
used macros for are part of the OS and/or software.  And I don't do 
enough repetitive stuff to actually get much value from a macro recorder.

I think a certain percentage are too lazy to learn how to do it, and 
another percentage don't know what a macro is.  :-(

Rather than write a macro program, I'd download an open source or free 
one.   :-)

No offense intended, but to me to suggest writing a macro program, 
unless you have a very special need, is like reinventing the wheel.   :-)

> IF function with example:
> > http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Calc:_IF_function

Maybe a lot of these types of links could be incorporated into LO's Help 
pages and/or on a free disk image you can download.  Perhaps Webmaster 
Krackedpress ND DVD too.  I don't know what's on that disk.

Wiki pages tend to baffle me, I just can never discover any "structure" 
like a newsgroup that makes sense to me.  And the wasted space......... 
 :-(  And they are never as efficient in use as a well designed book 
with a well designed index.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 13.0.1
Thunderbird 13.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2




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