On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

I haven’t been using my blog much over the ast few months. I have generally been very busy with life in general. Not least of course with work which has been a great player in my life this year. Not in a negative overtaking way but apart from my photography and walking, it has been my main creative output. So, trying to get things back on an even base before I leave once again for a weeks (for Christmas and New Year) it’s about time I updated this blog on my exploits with OpenSUSE 11.0.

OpenSUSE 11.0 Desktop with Firefox 3 and LyX

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Around the web a search for Vista alone will yield many an article about the terrible experiences people have had, how much better Windows XP is, and how it’s just junk.

It isn’t.

I’m saying this as ever, as a new user to the system, and as a Mac OS X and Linux user too. I’ll wager many of those proponents of the ‘Vista sucks’ message are either those who need/want to drive up visitor numbers/advertising revenue and those willing to read that message to confirm a half baked belief that will vindicate them as right. But this isn’t about what is right or wrong, just the facts. Just the facts Jack.

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Although this is not currently released until September 2008, I have been working with the latest working version of the upcoming OpenOffice.org 3.0 release.

So far my work has been squarely in Writer (the word processing component) which I have grown to really like over the past year. While some of its interface is a little sprawling in places, it can’t be accused of lacking features. I also happen to think that it works a lot better than Word. Two areas where Word always manages to drive me up the wall is complicated numbered lists and documents of any length with sections. It can get messy and frustrating when the section break doesn’t do as intended and often enough these problems are fixed by diving into Normal mode.

However Writer in its 3.0 iteration is looking very good. It has much improved note/reviewing features, a nice tidy zoom control in the lower right (clearly from MS Office 2007) and also supports multiple pages in the view when editing which I have never found a need for but that might be more in part due to me not owning a widescreen monitor or laptop. I could see some merit in two pages per view on a 1680 by 1050 widescreen display. However, on a 4:3 aspect screen at resolutions of 1280 by 960 or lower, it’s too small to look at comfortably.

The icons have also been a given a subtle touch up and they look nice.

I think OpenOffice.org has a bit of a dilemma here. It’s clearly become a very powerful alternative to Microsoft Office and I do genuinely feel that for the majority of uses in the enterprise or corporate environment would be served by OpenOffice.org very well; especially as its interface is much closer to pre-Office 2007 Microsoft Office products than 2007 is. The only exceptions are people with legacy Microsoft Access databases (which do get around a fair bit still), Powerpoint 2007 and very complicated and deeply workflow entrenched Excel spreadsheets.

The Access databases speak for themselves as they are often entwined in Visual Basic for Applications code and use a bunch of forms that are in the database itself. These don’t lend themselves for OpenOffice.org Base usage, but it’s not impossible for this situation to change if Microsoft does indeed drop VBA with the next release of Office for Windows, over time a replacement will need to be found. Invariably these databases tend to be small affairs on a desktop as most databases that are critical to an organisation’s functioning should now at least be on a dedicated database engine such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL etc. which is far in advanced of the scalability and reliability of Jet.

The second is Powerpoint. Up until 2007, it was a decidedly tired looking affair with naff slide styles, terrible clipart and it was a feature of dread in any meeting when someone beamed up their Powerpoint slideshow which could have been just as easily created on Powerpoint 4.0 from 1993. At least 2007 improved this by getting cool slide styles, excellent drawing functionality and generally it is harder to make a bad looking presentation now than before, although the Comic Sans risk always lurks in every company… Impress however whilst alright, isn’t that impressive. Generally the slide effects are very Powerpoint 4 and whilst OpenOffice.org 2.4 addressed this to a degree, there is always a chance that even a decent 128MB dedicated video card will grind to a halt doing a simple slide in transition. This has always been a huge problem with me adopting Impress as it is inexcusable. Even my old 14MHz Amiga 1200 15 years ago with Scala MM200 could exact smoother transitions. Sort it out, please. On top of this, Impress has for as long as I recall, has come with the crappest presentation templates in the world. They suck, all two of them. Sure you can install more and then have something great looking. However most users do not do this. After all, why have Powerpoint presentations looked the same since the dawn of time even when Microsoft offered templates to download. Please for the love of god sort this out for 3.0.

One good thing however that I hope is replicated into Writer and Calc is the table styles which give a nice professional look that Office 2007 offers to tables.

Finally Excel isn’t something I know a lot about but it’s clear that some organisations have Excel spreadsheets deeply embedded in the workflows they work with and a simple straight swap may not be just that. However for the majority of statistical analysis and chart functionality, Calc is great.

Essentially I am impressed with the quality of the current OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta and more is to come such as improved Office 2007 (OXML — formerly OOXML) import/export and other bits I am sure I have missed. However, it does strike me that many more companies shell out for Office licenses when probably 70-80% of their workforce doesn’t need all the functionality Office 2007 provides.

It’s even more mind boggling that a seven year old child would need Microsoft Word? Even Wordpad surely suffices for what they want most of the time. After all, us lot from the early 90s didn’t have this at all until 1993 when the Acorn Archimedes computers most schools had (a legacy of the BBC Micro programme) started getting a word processor called PenDown. It didn’t do masses but it was good enough. I do really think that so much money could be saved in education with suites like OpenOffice.org. Government is another good example.

This of course doesn’t detract from the fact that on the whole the MS Office ecosystem is great and has done a lot for the office but I am struggling to think why most people need Word when really they are using it as a glorified Wordpad application with most documents I see, no usage of styles or anything.

So what does OpenOffice.org 3.0 really need in my book to really sharpen its game?

• Some decent default slide templates for Impress. The current ones are bloody awful. Sorry guys.
• Tighten the interface up, try to introduce a bit more space in things, let the dialogs/windows breathe a bit more. There’s a lot of functionality, so don’t let that get hidden. I’m not suggesting a ribbon interface.
• Enhance Writer’s default styles to have nice suave styles like Word 2007 has with its nice colour schemes too

Perhaps also a leaf out of Firefox 3’s book is needed, skin the application to look more comfortable on the target systems. E.g. Luna style for XP, Aero Glass style for Vista, Aqua/Leopard style for OS X, GTK/QT look for Linux distributions. Sadly we live in a world where most people look at appearances first and that will often win them over rather than whether something is actually better. I’m currently using Live Writer (a Microsoft product) which looks great. Invest some time on aesthetics please.

Otherwise though, this is shaping up to be a good release. Let’s hope it becomes a fantastic release.

Up until recently the thought of running my own network seemed to be an exercise in frivolity, needlessness and just wasn’t worth it. After all why does one person need to operate a network? I’m a geek through and through (but a cool one I think hehe!) and this means that I have four computers. The ThinkPad which I am using now is my notebook computer, the Dell GX240 desktop is my main computer for doing just about anything — testing new software, programming, designing, scanning slides/negatives, browsing the web etc., the eMac is my main media computer which also doubles up as a television (with a USB tuner) and DVD recorder and secondary computer, and finally the iMac G3 in my bedroom is for when I want to kick back on my bean bag, and write sipping Costa Rican coffee in the light of a banker’s lamp! They all have a purpose you see.

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Oddly enough the two things I wish to write about are interlinked by one word. Zen. I’m sure most people will have come across it or heard of it, some may even think of Zen Buddhism but that isn’t the scope of this post. Instead I start with a ‘definition’ from Wikipedia which is quite nicely put:

Zen. ‘emphasis on mindful acceptance of the present moment, spontaneous action, and letting go of self-conscious, judgmental thinking‘

The two things are something I watched today and Zenwalk – a Linux distribution. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok here’s a screenshot everybody of my Ubuntu 7.10 desktop set to only use sub pixel smooth with no hinting in Firefox with the New York Times’ website open:

(Click on the thumbnail to enlarge)

Yes, Linux font rendering does look good, n’est pas?

It’s often cited that Linux just looks bad put simply. A lack of ‘professional artists’ some might say even, but that’s a ludicrous statement. What Linux does well is promote absolute configurability with the user interface and the whole system. Counter this with Mac OS X’s default “Blue” and “Grey” theme, and Windows XP’s Blue, Silver and Green (Vista has a couple more options but they all look like ‘Aero’) and you can see that by default the interface on Windows looks much the same from system to system. In fact the basic window widgets of Windows haven’t changed since Windows 95 (Close is still an ‘X’ etc.)

In fact Mac OS X has elements from 1984 in it–the Apple menu for one and the window resize remains in the bottom right hand corner; as does the system menu bar at the top of the screen.

Linux however can with KDE and Gnome (and others) be configured so differently that what one person sees as Ubuntu can end up looking not too dissimilar to OpenSUSE, or Fedora, or not even Linux at all (which apart from the Jaguar-esque tabs is very close.)

The point is Linux can look pretty darn beautiful but the problem is that out of the box it’s very easy for someone with no sense of aesthetics to come in and change it all and whilst they think it looks good (they’ll change it again in a few days when they get bored) it often looks like a dog’s dinner. Mac OS X and Windows are good at being firm on the user’s shoulder saying, “We’ve given you a couple of colour variations but you can’t easily change this to something totally different.” Microsoft reputedly disabled skinning in Windows XP for this very reason as users may have ended up creating a Windows system that was inconsistent(…) and also couldn’t guarantee their apps on a third party skin that might be incomplete.

Linux has its inconsistent interfaces but on the whole most of them are up to scratch now. Again it’s a bit of a pain that there is more than one gadget (there’s an Amiga term if there was one) toolkit like GTK, QT etc. but overall the system looks more consistent than it ever has done. Windows has its fair share of inconsistencies too, the much vaunted ‘Add Fonts’ dialog in the Fonts directory that has survived since Windows 3.0 (1990), Windows 2000-eque 16 colour icons here and there and Win16 (WoW)/DOS windows uisng an old skin… Mac OS X with its Aqua, Staintless Steel and Plastic interface types (being refined in Leopard.)

Linux (or rather Gnome and KDE mainly, as Linux isn’t the desktop itself but for simplicity’s sake) isn’t therefore the only inconsistent user interface experience. The reason it can look so rubbish is the same reason most people’s Word documents look awful because they have found they have 50 fonts and 16.7 million colours to choose from and they want to use them all at once.

Some distributions look ‘just OK’ out of the box, Ubuntu and Fedora are in that for me. Some look drop dead neat like OpenSUSE 10.3 and Mandriva which just look great, particularly OpenSUSE’s green which is just fab. Some look corporate and steady like Slackware and so forth.

The point is Linux doesn’t look amateur because it’s Linux, but because the configurability of Linux allows for people without the sense of human interface design considerations and basic aesthetics to slap down a nasty theme with ease; where as Windows and Mac OS X need skinning engines, or system file adjustments.

Here’s my Ubuntu desktop (Gnome) with a nice background and a simple Window Border (Splint), Clearlooks Classic Controls and a green lead background – blues and greens are complimentary hues. No Compiz in action but I don’t need it and it’ll only slow down my Radeon 7500 (but it does work.)

My Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop with Tracker Instant Search

So food for thought, should some distributions limit the skinning capability to improve consistency, usability and the general professional image of the distribution for it to be perhaps accepted for a widespread corporate roll out?

I’m all for configurability; but you won’t catch me using a black user interface because it’s too much with my Thinkpad being black but I also find it straining on my eyes.

Immediately I thought of what I usually get called after a few glasses of red, “Vickster.” Then I shook off my ego (sorry I had been watching too many politicians arguing over the toss last night on telly and their posturing.)

Vixta is a Linux distro which is based on Fedora and it uses the KDE desktop environment , the curious part of it is that it ships out of the box to look like Windows Vista. Now this may end up with a cease and desist notice (some of the graphics look far too close to the ‘real thing’) but actually it’s not too far off the mark of what Vista looks like in some elements. In others it’s clear it’s KDE particularly as the Konqueror file manager is just that–it’s not Windows Explorer.