Date: prev next · Thread: first prev next last
2012 Archives by date, by thread · List index


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




--
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted

Context


Privacy Policy | Impressum (Legal Info) | Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified, all text and images on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPLv2). "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use thereof is explained in our trademark policy.