Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> New Spreadsheets fun
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Here's a sampling of what people have been asking for:
> | * support for Open Document Format (handy for those who use
> | linux-based machines and Open Office products)
> `----
And Lotus Workplace, and WordPerfect, and Star Office, and ...
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/new-spreadsheets-fun.html
I could definitely see this one having some real merit. Especially if
they can also add the ability to produce gantt, pert, and utilization
chart ;-)
> Google is part of the ODF alliance; just one among many countries and large
> companies.
>
> I had an argument just an hour ago.
>
> - (*) Adamant $Colleague says: everybody uses PowerPoint,
> so it needs to be used.
Which version. Can you send me that in Office 95 format please?
Visio 2000, 2002, or 2003?
I just had a situation where I needed to "merge" two spreadsheets. I
opened them in Excel, and could not find a way to "track changes" or
otherwise compare the files.
I opened the exact same spreadsheet in OO-Calc, and in 3 minutes I had
the two documents compared, merged, and had highlighted the changes.
In MS-Word, I had a really nice looking form I needed to fill out. I
had the critical information in a spreadsheet, but there were merged
cells, statistical fields, and the data was in "forms" going down the
sheet. Excel had no trouble importing the Word table forms when
pasted, but trying to get the same forms back into word -- not pretty.
Powerpoint still has the advantages over Impress when it comes to
animated slide shows. I can do an animated sequence diagram that
"looses something in the translation" when I try to view it in Impress.
On the other hand, after spending hours getting an animated
presentation coordinated with small voice instructions, I zipped up the
files and the recipient couldn't make head nor tails out of the
content. I unzipped it into a different directory, and I couldn't even
read my on content on the machine used to create it. Talk about a
little "portability" problem!!
> - Me says: it's proprietary, obscure, costly to access, non-standard (ODF is
> the ISO standard), and it discourages open collaboration.
Not relevant to the pointy haired types. What DOES matter is that you
can find that ODF document 6 months later using Google desktop, even if
all you can remember is a few keywords. The word documents are lucky
to show up at all. What's realy cool is that you can even find
documents based on keywords in the diagrams.
> - Adamant $Colleague repeats (*) leading to a loop.
This reminds me of the days when PCs were first coming out. Managers
often used wood with long nails to track their receipts and payments.
They were called "stick-pins". At the end of the day, each pin was put
into an envelope, each envelope was put into a shoebox, and at the end
of the month, the book-keeper would collect the shoebox and manually
write the entries into a paper ledger. If the bookkeeper didn't like
the format of the shoebox, she could work somewhere else.
I remember the days when you would spend hours counting inventory,
manually entering every item onto a paper form, and if you didn't get
the numbers just right, you got repremanded for your unreadable
printing (writing on a clipboard that's resting on your knee while
counting product with the other hand - not the most conducive to good
penmenship.
I remember the days when drafters would have electric erasers so that
they could neatly erase the bad lines before an assistant traced the
lines onto the vellum.
And in 1977, those people thought no one would ever use a PC to do
those simple tasks. Computers were big, expensive, hard to use, and
were only used by really big companies, mostly for bookkeeping. Even
the big companies would hire keypunchers to enter data from those forms
that the clerks at the stores had filled out. Then they would have a
second batch of operators key in the same information, then they would
look for mismatches, to make sure that at least ONE of them was
accurate.
The keypunchers usually punched the forms into punched cards. The
hollarith cards were then fed into a little card reader, and 8 hours of
work would be chewed up in about 15 seconds.
If you were a temp, and you were really lucky, you'd get assigned to a
"key to disk" system. Then you would enter the information from the
forms directly to the the computer, but the computer simply wrote the
values from each form to a big floppy disk. Usually an 8-inch floppy.
And then at the end of the day, they would put the floppy into the big
computer, and it would spit out results.
And if you were really really lucky, you'd get to work on a 3270
terminal, entering data from these forms, into a block-mode terminal.
The fields were even laid out almost like the forms. That was the
easiest of all.
It was mind-numbing work. You would try to build up a rhythm, often
typing to the tune of an imaginary song playing in your head, to keep
your speed up as high as possible.
And most of those people did this every day, not even thinking about
it. They would all take a break at 10 AM and 2 PM, and a 1/2 hour
lunch at 12:30. They would all come it at exactly 8:00 AM, and go home
at exactly 5 PM, unless there was a rush, in which case, the salaried
workers often worked well into the night.
Computers were the domain of "Kelly girls" and Accountants with green
visors.
And if you suggested the possibility of using personal computers, or
even minicomputers that were interactive, they would look at you like
you had 3 heads. Usually it was a good way to get a new assignment.
> They are running out of 'ammunition' (defense/offense arguments), those
> Windows sticklers...
The problem is that most of the people who are still addicted to
MS-Office are still paper pushers. They still spend hours doing
mundane cut-and-paste, carefully verifying information going into the
new document, to make sure that it matches the information in the
source document. The time sheet goes into the weekly spreadsheet, the
weekly spreadsheet for the work-group get's put into a workbook for the
department, and maybe the division will have someone push that workbook
into a database. Then they crunch the numbers for the monthly report.
Every 3 months, they spend about a month trying to compile the
information they need for the quarterly report and the 10Q. Often a
CEO doesn't know until hours before the deadline that his company won't
be meeting expectations.
They write memos in beautiful Microsoft Word documents, and mail them
as attachements in e-mails, often with little more than a cryptic file
name as an indication of the content. Then the reader opens the
document, prints it out, scribbles all over it with read pen, and turns
it over to a secretary, along with the original document, so she can
key in all of those revisions. If a few revisions get misworded, or a
few critical bits of information get lost, it's no big deal - Ken
Lehey.
And the power point slide show has become a whole new medium for
frustrated artists and wannabe artists. Some executives even have a
professional artist "dress up" their presentations. Company logos,
special effects, graphical animations. And then during the
presentation, the projector can't handle the resolution, the
information is now incorrect, the people are so impressed, that after
the speech, they shake hands with the speaker and say "great slide
show, what was your name, and what does your company do?".
But two months later, when a member of the audience actually calls him
and askes about a specific slide, can he find it? Heck no.
But this is what Mr Softee is advocating. Stick up for that status
quo. Who cares if nobody can find your document 6 months later, or
that you spent 5 hours trying to beautify a memo that should have taken
30 second to write. Who cares if you can't share a document without
sending out 50 copies. And who cares if you can't read your e-mail
because you got 200 pieces of spam, each with powerpoint, word, and
excel documents that you should "open immediately". And of course each
is about 2-4 megabytes because it's so loaded with true-color graphics,
attachements inside attachements, and of course the little "Cracker
Jack surprise" macrovirus that just dumped the personnel reviews of the
entire team into the desktop of the guy who wants your job, or the
rival who is bidding on the same contract you are.
But we have got to protect that monopoly!
;-)
Rex
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