OpenOffice - WTF?

dhromed

What exactly is wrong with the Windows font viewer again?

It fails to display the font in a usable manner. It's rudimentary. It's fine for a hobbyist's 0.1 version, patting himself on the back for having made a good start, but it's not really a complete piece of software.

It just dumps a small subset of characters (an erotically suggestive pangram, no less) in a window, with the larger font sizes cut off, boldly insinuating "Here's your goddamn font, now leave me the fuck alone."

Come to think of what I'm missing in the current fontviewer, I think it should be replaced with the character map, and include a few small features:

a text box for a custom phrase.
Variable glyph display size. The current Charmap method shows no love for the user, and you want to show love, bruv.
Resizable window. Really, why doesn't "scrollable display area" immediately ring the "resizable window" bell?

So kind of like the Mac Font Book, really, but with all glyphs and a textbox.

belgariontheking

@dhromed said:

an erotically suggestive pangram, no less

Eh, what's the pangram they use in the dutch version? In my version (XP, English), It's

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890

dhromed

@belgariontheking said:

Eh, what's the pangram they use in the dutch version? In my version (XP, English), It's
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890

Odd. I remember it being Jackdaws love my big sfinx of quartz 0-9. That just screams The birds love my sizeable dick, you know.

In Dutch it's an unassuming sentence, much like the quick brown fox...

DescentJS

@dhromed said:

@belgariontheking said:
Eh, what's the pangram they use in the dutch version? In my version (XP, English), It's
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890

Odd. I remember it being Jackdaws love my big sfinx of quartz 0-9. That just screams The birds love my sizeable dick, you know.

In Dutch it's an unassuming sentence, much like the quick brown fox...

It's probably a configurable setting somewhere in the registry, and someone changed it on your computer. It's the quick brown fox here on all 4 of the computers I have quick access to.

morbiuswilters

@belgariontheking said:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890

TRWTF is that you don't find this erotic.

ender

@DescentJS said:

It's probably a configurable setting somewhere in the registry, and someone changed it on your computer. It's the quick brown fox here on all 4 of the computers I have quick access to.

While it might be configurable somewhere, I noticed that it uses either quick brown fox or jackdaws depending on font - and it seems to use jackdaws even on localized Windows versions.

DescentJS

@ender said:

@DescentJS said:
It's probably a configurable setting somewhere in the registry, and someone changed it on your computer. It's the quick brown fox here on all 4 of the computers I have quick access to.
While it might be configurable somewhere, I noticed that it uses either quick brown fox or jackdaws depending on font - and it seems to use jackdaws even on localized Windows versions.

hmmm. that's odd. I don't see the same thing on vista even for that exact same font.

ender

@DescentJS said:

hmmm. that's odd. I don't see the same thing on vista even for that exact same font.

Yes, it appears to be limited to XP and older.

Nyquist

@morbiuswilters said:

@belgariontheking said:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890

TRWTF is that you don't find this erotic.

Would have thought the 'big sphinx of quartz' was more erotic... unless you're into furries o.o

DescentJS

@Nyquist said:

@morbiuswilters said:
@belgariontheking said:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890
TRWTF is that you don't find this erotic.
Would have thought the 'big sphinx of quartz' was more erotic... unless you're into furries o.o

So you're rock hard?

dhromed

@Nyquist said:

Would have thought the 'big sphinx of quartz' was more erotic... unless you're into furries o.o

Your naturally prudish mind does not please us.

belgariontheking

@Nyquist said:

@morbiuswilters said:
@belgariontheking said:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890

TRWTF is that you don't find this erotic.

Would have thought the 'big sphinx of quartz' was more erotic... unless you're into furries o.o

As much as your comment fails, I'm glad you made it because I skipped over morb's comment when scrolling through the page.

astonerbum

@Daniel Beardsmore said:

I have to say, Microsoft Word really isn't that bad. It's complicated, but that's because it's a professional piece of software. Adding the ribbon was a pretty useless move, as it doesn't make the program more suitable for those who can only cope with WordPad (it's still freakishly complex), and those of us who actually knew how to use it, are thrown for an infinite loop.

Never tried OOo, always sounded too bloated for me. Now that I no longer use a PII 333 with 512 MB RAM, I guess I could see what it does. I refused to install Office at home in Windows due to the tendency of it to mess up your PC (mostly Word) but I think Word Viewer (which I do have) is not a whole lot better. I finally found the hidden setting that stops it pwning .html files, and I've found some files that I can regsvr32 /u to stop it pwning .xml files.

Word is a competent word processor, but it's long since got too big for its boots and thinks that it's a competent XML and HTML editor and screws up your configuration of those file types.

I disagree with the ribon point I love it. It took a bit of getting used to but its worth the transition. I actually love the 2007 interface, definately solves most problems old word had, in terms of previewing styles before applying, usability, etc.

However I used openoffice because of the latex math library which allows quick typing of formulas, I took notes in oo writer in college. MS Word still has no good competitior, their formula editor is slow to use, clunky, and did I mention slow to use? I could type out 100 latex formulas knowing NO latex (learning through the visual editor for a day or so) faster than I could design one in word.

To this day though, OO has the refresh bug where scrolling and inserting objects like formulas does not trigger a correct redraw leading to the page looking like missalligned crap. WTF???

I only have MS Word for locking you into one proprietary format. Other than that as a piece of software it is quite good at least they fixed quirks in 2007. However OO is good for giving MS competition because if MS Office/IE/Windows Vista is any indication, a little competition benefits the consumers a lot.