Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Labeling in Calc

Hi :)
I think that no you have an answer there is no need to continue to pursue this or deal with ongoing 
discussion about it.  It's fine to just walk away from it.  

That was a good point about "You've absorbed the cost of your own time and pegged it's value at 
zero.".  Base might be a better tool and might be able to read data directly from a website but it 
would need someone that knows how to use it.  

Also i'm not convinced that Base is yet worth investing a lot of time in unless you are prepared to 
go all the way to programming and developing it.  Calc is more mature and stable as more devs work 
on it.  Anyway, just my 2cents again
Regards from
Tom :)  


--- On Sun, 22/7/12, Andrew Brager <apb3304@bak.rr.com> wrote:

From: Andrew Brager <apb3304@bak.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Labeling in Calc
To:
 users@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Sunday, 22 July, 2012, 19:40

On 7/22/2012 10:34 AM, Andreas Säger wrote:
> Enter raw data into a spreadsheet (Excel, Gnumeric, Calc, whatever), a text editor, some dBase 
> application, a true database, whatever.
> Connect a Base document to the tabular data source and design a report.

But that's the point isn't it.  I've got to enter data into the spreadsheet.  We're in agreement.

Why must I take the time, expense and trouble to "design a report" when I can get satisfactory 
results with a bare minimum of time, expense and trouble using Calc?

Clearly, you know Base and designing said report is no big deal for you.  I think I may have opened 
Base once, and I simply don't have the time to learn it, nor the money to pay someone else to do 
the work for me.  Especially not when a solution presents itself in Calc so
 readily.

Yes, your solution is elegant, ideal and based in academia where people have all the time in the 
world to learn applications and techniques and then design dream or "best practice" solutions.  In 
the world of business it's about simplicity, speed, expense and return on investment.  I can hire a 
virtual assistant from a third world country for less than $2 an hour, who already knows how to use 
a spreadsheet (not that cut & pasting requires much knowledge), whereas to hire a programmer to 
design a report would cost in excess of $8 an hour (and everytime I need a change I either have to 
go find that same contractor who now charges more, or start the interview process all over again; a 
time consuming task) - plus I still need to hire the assistant that ends up doing just about the 
exact same (busy) work anyway.  So where is the economical benefit to your solution?

Your solution works for you because you have not
 considered the real cost of implementing it.  It may be "best practice" from an academic, 
engineering and/or scientific standpoint, but from a SMALL business perspective it makes little 
sense.  You've absorbed the cost of your own time and pegged it's value at zero.  I'm taking real 
dollars out of my own pocket and paying someone to do the work.  It's the same reason why people 
hire housekeepers - if the cost of the housekeeper were more than the employers income they 
couldn't afford to pay the housekeeper for long and would eventually have to clean their own house. 
 You're cleaning your own house and that works for you.  Great!  I prefer to pay someone so I'm 
free to focus my time on what I hope are more profitable endeavors.

> As a matter of fact, database forms (even Base forms) provide much faster and less error prone 
> ways of data entry. In the last 2 years I replaced a dozend of useless spreadsheet lists
 with simple databases because "my users" never really got used to spreadsheet editing (navigation, 
dates, numbers, clear, delete, ...). Spreadsheets are too versatile for untrained users. Wrong data 
yield wrong results. My databases collect a thousand of manually entered records per month on a 
local network.

So really you're trying to apply a one-size-fits-all approach.  My users (1 or 2 assistants) 
already know how to use spreadsheets so technically they're not "untrained", whereas your users do 
not know how.  You collect thousands of MANUALLY entered records per month. I might have maybe a 
thousand or so records total, which can be cut & pasted from website to spreadsheet.  My needs are 
different than yours.  Any solution needs to take the customer's needs and unique situation into 
account and in this case I'm the customer.


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