Re: [OS:N:] Developing for developers and users

[Charles MacDonald <cmacd achilles net>]

Bill Kendrick said:
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 09:39:58AM -0400, Charles MacDonald wrote:
>> MS office is not the best tool for what it is used for.
>
> I always joked that MS should take Excel, remove all of the math and
> charting features out of it, and sell it as a completely new product:
> "MS Table."  99% of the time I see an Excel spreadsheet, it's used
> simply as a kludge to cobble together data into columns and rows.  Half
> the time, it's not even in a form that's easily sortable.  *sigh*

Not wanting to pick on a monopoly, but I recall an interesting 
conversation with a developer who was doing spreadsheet stuff at OLS 
2003. He said he was tempted to make his product have TWO versions of 
some of the math stuff.  The academically Correct version and a MS 
compatibility mode with the bugs he had observed in the behavior of Excel.

I agree that using Excel as a mini-db application is problematic.  Even 
my wife has rejected my old database of my record albums, and has listed 
our CD's in Excel, with one title of songs she likes per column and one 
CD per row. - with the Row numbers corresponding to the position of the 
CD in the Pioneer 300 Cd player.

I am not suggesting that developers should go out on a limb and create 
artificial interfaces out of the blue, just saying that the MS 
interfaces although often designed with a good deal of human factors 
research are not always the best for user needs.

Perhaps OSS needs to start thinking about user forums where interface 
issues get looked at with real non-technical users.  perhaps a spiffy 
data-management program is more important than a spreadsheet?

(in fairness, the second spreadsheet to reach popular sales -Lotus 123- 
was advertised as a database management tool.  with only 64K to play 
with, Visi-Calc on the Apple ][ really did not have the space to ponder 
such an application.)

--
Charles MacDonald  Stittsville Ontario
 cmacd achilles net      Just Beyond the Fringe
           http://home.achilles.net/~cmacd/
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