Re: [libreoffice-users] Impress query

Hi :)
To be fair 

1.  Many people here are not native English speakers.  On the plus side that means you often get 
answers at any hour of the day or night.  Many other on-line places rely on US timetables.  

2.  It's a very unusual request.  


Also because this place is almost entirely volunteers we are not seeking to close tickets asap.  
So, our initial answers are rarely expected to completely solve the issue but do often seek out 
further information or aim to explore the parameters of the problem.  We DON'T consider a matter 
closed after our first guess.  Indeed sometimes even after the original poster has let us know the 
problem has been fixed we sometimes go on discussing side-issues, other ways around, what to watch 
out for next, new techniques and so on.  Sometimes that leads us to solve half a dozen differnt 
people's problems in one thread, teach a bunch of people new skills (or learn them) AND solve 
problems before the op runs into them.    


I have been to quite a lot of PowerPoint presentations and seen many more and Impress ones and i 
have been on this list for nearly 3 years.  Usually we get very similar questions or ones that get 
fixed with similar approaches.  This is the first time i've ever heard of anyone wanting a "Count 
down" timer on their slides!  


Now that the question has been asked i find it unbelievable that no-one has thought of it before!  
It might even have kept me awake during some presentations or made me aware that i didn't have time 
to write it all down (which i only tend to do to try to keep awake).  If there could be different 
options such as a progress-bar (like when loading heavy web-pages or installing programs) or a 
"launch count down" in the last 5-10 seconds or something.  



There was a throw-away remark about "may as well ask for the moon" "unless we "learn to do our own 
coding" as though learning to do the coding is an impossibility.  However this project DOES allow 
people to learn how to, even encourages it.  


You don't have to be a brilliantly gifted student studying programming at college.  In fact that 
might even get in the way because apparently formal courses don't teach anything about security!  
(according to a recent magazine report so don't rely on it!)  The LibreOffice way is to learn at 
your own pace, preferably by getting a mentor from the devs mailing list to help guide you and with 
the whole of the devs irc channel.  Some of the devs do get paid and are currently working in 
different companies such as SUSE, Redhat, Google, maybe Canonical (and others) and get seconded to 
TDF to work on LibreOffice as part of their paid work.  Generally people are encouraged to work on 
some of the "Easy Hacks"
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Easy_Hacks
at first so that they gain experience, confidence and learn in-house styles that may vary between 
projects normally.  


Just yesterday someone wrote to this list asking for help with his coding work as he had 
independently found a bug, written a coding patch and applied it without any help from anyone in 
the wider community here!  His patch is now getting looked at by our devs on their mailing list and 
may reach QA and may get into a future official release of LibreOffice!  Even though i know nothing 
about coding, applying patches or compiling he seemed to appreciate the link i was able to give him 
to help him "compile" his patch.  But as i said you don't have to be brilliant like that to get 
involved with coding.  I imagine a lot of it is quite routine and just a case of following 
orders/instructions/guidance.  


Regards from 

Tom :)  





> ________________________________
> From: Miss Keating <MissKeating@comcast.net>
> To: bg@fdi.us 
> Cc: laginnis@gmail.com; users@global.libreoffice.org 
> Sent: Saturday, 4 May 2013, 1:41
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Impress query
>
>
> To Brewster Gillett:
>
> I can't help with your search for knowledge, but feel impelled to 
> comment on the stunning inability of the gang to comprehend your crystal clear, 
> simple, and obvious description of that which you wish to accomplish.
>
> If your quest advances to the status of "enhancement request", a useful 
> extension would be the ability to set each countdown clock separately, so that 
> different slides could be on display for differing time periods.
>
> You specified a digital counter; I would like the option for an analog 
> clock.  
>
> Since we're not likely to get any of this until we learn how to do our 
> own coding, we may as well ask for the moon.
>
> MK
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