david4mv (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:
Um, no. I drive the BMW. That's how I know just how much I hate it.

I use Office XP at home, and it's so full of annoying quirks that I
wonder that anybody has the nerve to demand money for it. I've had
clients running various versions of Word, and the programming interface
is so bizarre and lacking in consistency that I sometimes suspect that
it was deliberately made that way by insane Microsoft programmers.

No, Office is a stinker. OpenOffice certainly has its problems, but I
have some hope that they will at least be fixed one day. Microsoft Office gives
me little to hope for.

Luke

Luke Webber wrote:

david4mv (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:
True, but then I didn't choose the analogy. <g>

Luke

Luke Webber wrote:
My experience is very different.

There's no denying that Office products have their quirks, but no more
or less than any other product - we live in an age where poor software
quality is the accepted norm. Ahem, that's a separate discussion.
I've been using all of the Office apps for at least 8 years that I can
remember and haven't wanted to toss any of them out the window for
lack of features or usability. I do regret not having more experience
with OpenOffice. We checked out StarOffice a few years ago but it
wasn't as evolved as it is now. I simply don't have time or need to
look elsewhere.

As far as the programming interfaces, I dare say I've probably spent
more time the bowels of each of the Office apps than anyone here.
Like the end-user applications, there are some quirks in the object
models, but the DOM of each app is mostly logical, very powerful, and
can (usually) be a pleasure to work with. So while the API can be
characterized as bizarre and lacking in consistency, it is getting
better with each release, and I disagree that this is really a
problem. However, I _am_ concerned about what MS plans to do in
Office 12 and subsequent releases - once again they may turn the
development world upside down as they re-engineer their internals.

I have no experience with Open Office development. The OO SDK is for
C/C++ and Java developers. I'm competent with Java, not C, but no one
has ever offered to pay me to write Java or C code anyway. Certainly
no one has ever seriously asked me for an MV interface with Open
Office. But I _have_ been paid to write code that integrates with MS
Office apps, so that's where my focus will remain until the market
demands otherwise. I'll note that from what I've read, the BASIC
macros in Open Office are very similar to those in MS Office - If
someone did ask me to do some coding into OO I wouldn't be as hesitent
as I was a few years ago.

Interesting news in this area:
Google assists Open Office development:
http://tinyurl.com/d4nmf
Microsoft offers MS Office document formats as open standards:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123636,00.asp

T