Subject: RE: Topic: Tables and 1.0
From: Joaquin Cuenca Abela (cuenca@celium.net)
Date: Fri May 04 2001 - 06:53:22 CDT
On 03 May 2001 15:09:02 +0100, Tom Newton wrote:
> > From: Joaquin Cuenca Abela [mailto:cuenca@celium.net]
> > Sent: 03 May 2001 13:22
> <snip>
> > maybe I've not been very clear, here... rtf import/export *of tables*
> > is a little detail if compared to not having tables at all.
>
> Not if you want software that "Just Works"(TM).
I think that our concepts of "Just Works" are quite different. I think
that your "Just Works" is == to my "Perfect".
Should we revert the lists support because there are still some
exporters than don't support it?
Should we throw the insert dialog to the trash can because it doesn't
support unicode stuff?
Should we erase the emacs bindings because they are not complete?
(Alt-F brings the File menu, don't moves the cursor forward a word)
And so on, so on...
With 1.0 I would like to reach the church secretaries market. Nor the
high typographic quality, nor even the slightly sophisticated (use of
equations, references, bibliographic stuff, versions, etc.) market.
And church secretaries don't know what in the hell is rtf (I spoke with
a guy at GUADEC that didn't know what is rtf --and in spanish, ie, I was
not misunderstanding anything ;-) --, and if you think that there were a
single normal person invited at guadec you're wrong by a far shot), but
they know what is a table, and they know what is a bulleted list.
If we want a word-processor that *just works* for this market, we really
need some sort of tables support. And Martin hack doesn't do the work.
It may do the work for some very patient hacker that wants absolutely to
use abi, and still needs a table, but I don't want to see the head of a
church secretary when starts a table like that:
+------+------+
|I | |
+------+------+
And [s]he starts writing something as:
+------+------+
|Monthly SalI |
+------+------+
and suddently realizes that the vertical bar has disappeared. That's
not just work (but anyway is a nice hack for hackers, and our current
market is currently mainly dominated by hackers, so is a useful hack).
Well, all that to say (borrowing Paul language) that:
assert(just_works != perfect);
;-)
Cheers,
-- Joaquín Cuenca Abela cuenca@celium.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat May 26 2001 - 03:51:02 CDT